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CONTENTS 


PART I. 

Else’s Story.—I ntroduction of Herself and Chronicle—Her 
Brother Friedrich [Fritz]—Her Ancestry—Other Members 
of the Family— Delicate Irony—Martin Luther — Else’s 
Treasures... j 

PART II. 

Friedrich’s Chronicle.—S age Reflections—Leaves Home fol 
Erfurt—Gets Lost in a Forest—A Gloomy Night—Arrives 
at Erfurt—The University—Visits Luther’s Home with Him 
—Accident to Luther—Obtains a Scholarship—Luther Dan¬ 
gerously Ill. 25 

PART III. 

Else’s Chronicle.—E va, a Distant Relative, Introduced Into 
the Family—Discussions Among Them Connected with the 
Event—Eva’s Religion—Its Peculiarity—Makes a Deep Im¬ 
pression—Legend of St. Christopher. 41 

PART IV. 

Else’s Chronicle Continued.—F ritz at Home Again—The 
Change which His University Life is Producing in Him— 
Interesting Family Developments—Eva Begins Latin. Ex¬ 
tract from Friedrich’s Chronicle.—M ore of Martin 
Luther—He Discovers a Latin Bible in the University 
Library—The Plague Breaks Out in the University—Luther 
Determines to Become a Monk—The Excitement and Dis¬ 
tress Among His Friends—His Monkish Life. 50 

PART V. 

Else’s Chronicle.—A Terrible Time—The Plague in Eisenach 
—In the Family—Fritz’s Attack and Recovery—Eva’s Attack 
—Fritz’s Interview with Her when Supposed to be Dying .. 70 

PART VI. 

Friedrich’s Story. — He Becomes an Augustinian Monk in 
Luther’s Cloister—What he Writes from there January 20, 

1510—The Bible Discovered by Luther put in his Hands— 

April 9th, he Finds the Missing Part of Eva’s Bible Sentence 
—Frequent References to Luther. 78 








ii 


CONTENTS. 


PART VII. 

PAGE. 

Else’s Story. —Her Mental Conflicts on Account of Fritz—Her 
other Brothers Repudiate Monks—More of Eva—Dr. Tetzel 
—His Sale of Indulgences—What was Thought of the Matter 
—Eva’s Legend of St. Catherine—Else’s Visit to the Elector 91 

PART VIII. 

Fritz’s Story. —The Vicar-General Staupitz—Evangelical In¬ 
struction Received from Him and His Confessor—Fritz is 
Ordered to Rome—Tauler’s Sermons—Augustine’s Manu¬ 
script Confessions—Finds His Companion to Rome is to be 
Martin Luther—Luther tells him about his Beginning to 
Preach—Their Journey to Rome—Luther and Staupitz—The 
Light Breaking on Fritz’s Mind—A Benedictine Monastery 
—Rome Reached. 109 


PART IX. 

Elbe’s Story.—T he Family Leave for Wittenberg—Their New 
Place of Residence and Relations—Their Journey from 
Eisenach—More of Eva—The Mystery—Plays Acted in the 
Churches—Eva Decides on Being a Nun. 129 

PART X. 

Fritz’s Story.—T he Monks at Rome—Festivals and Sacred 
Ceremonies—Holy Relics—Luther’s Strange Conduct at the 
Holy Staircase—Corruption and Wickedness of the Holy 
City—Inquiries Concerning their Pilgrimage. Eva’s Story 
—H er Life at the Convent—Sister Beatrice—Aunt Agnes... 148 

PART XI. 

Elbe’s Story.—H ome Life—The Father’s Latest Invention— 
Ulrich Von Gersdorf and Chriemhild—Herr Reichenbach— 
More of Luther—His Instructions to Else and her New Re¬ 
ligious Experiences—Her Betrothal to Herr Reichenbach— 
Luther’s Debate in Favor of the Bible—His Opinions Deeply 
Impressing Other Minds.. 166 

PART XII. 

Eva’s Story.—C onvent Life—Luther Appointed Deputy Vicar- 
General—His Evangelical Sentiments—Aunt Agnes. Else’s 
Story.—C hriemhild and Ulrich Married—The Plague at 
Wittenberg—Letter from Dr. Luther—Tetzel and a Speci¬ 
men of his Indulgences—Repudiated by Luther—Luther’s 
Sermon Before the Elector. 185 

PART XIII. 

Else’s Story Continued.—N ovember 1, 1517—Luther’s Theses 
Against Indulgences—Their Effect on the Community—The 
Students Burn Tetzel’s Answer to Luther. Fritz’s Story 







CONTENTS . 


iii 


—A Review—His Mission Through Germany—A Priest and 
Woman—Gets Unlooked-for News in the Thuringian Forest 
— Luther’s Theses at Tubingen — Philip Melancthon at 
Wittenberg—Fritz Visits His Home—Placed at the Monas¬ 
tery at Mainz—John Wesel..202 

PART XIV. 

Eire’s Story.—F amily Events Since She Last Wrote—Luther 
and Melancthon—Their Relations to, and Opinions of each 
Other—Luther’s Appeal to the Emperor—Melancthon’s Wife 
—Luther Publishes Another Work, “ The Babylonish Cap¬ 
tivity”— His “Appeal to the Nobility” — December 10, 

1520—The Plot Thickens—Luther Burns the Decretals and 
the Pope’s Bull Against Himself—Public Excitement and 
Condition of Wittenberg. Eva’s Story.—S he Reads the 
Bible to Others in the Convent—Its Effect—Discovers that 
Her Father was a Hussite—Luther’s Last Book in the Con¬ 
vent—His Commentary on the Psalms Appears—Fritz Im¬ 
prisoned at Mainz—His Letter to His Friends—Its EfEect 
Upon Eva.. 220 


PART XV. 

Thekla’s Story.— Luther Takes His Departure for Worms — 

Her Attachment to Him for His Religious Instructions—How 
the Others Felt—Luther’s Triumphal Journey—He Preaches 
at Erfurt. Fritz’s Story. —Cause of His Imprisonment— 

His Escape from Prison and Reception at the Castle of 
Ebernburg—An Attempt to Discourage Luther from Going 
to Worms—It Fails—Affecting Incidents of His Journey— 

His Entry Into Worms—His Appearance Before the Diet— 

His Mental Conflict that Night—Second Appearance Before 
the Diet—Result—He Suddenly Disappears—His Friends Fear 
the Worst—Fritz Becomes a Hawker of Luther’s Writings.. 238 

PART XVI. 

Fritz’s Story —.His Success in Selling Luther’s Publications— 
Sentiments Concerning Luther Among the Different Classes 
He Fell in With—Fritz at Paris—At Basil—Ulrich von Hut- 
ten—Interview with Erasmus at Zurich—Zwingle—What 
the Swiss Thought of Luther—Fritz in Prison at Franconia 
— Priest Ruprecht and His Woman Again. Thekla’s 
Story. —Fritz Escapes—Chriemhild and Ulrich—Condition 
of the Peasants—Luther is Discovered—His Refuge at the 
Castle of Wartburg—There Engaged in Translating the 
Bible into German—Thekla Reads Portions of It to the Peo¬ 
ple—A Letter from her Lover Bertrand. ... 259 

PART XVII. 

Eva’s Story. —She Receives some Sheets of Luther’s German 
Bible—Its Effect in the Convent—Luther’s Theses Against 
Monastic Life Reach Her—Monks Returning to Ordinary 





IV 


CONTENTS. 


Page. 

Life—Several of the Younger Nuns Abjuring Convent Life 
—Eva Hesitates—She Hears of Fritz’s Imprisonment—Death 
of Beatrice—Eva Prepares to Escape from the Convent. 
Elbe’s Story. —Indulgences Again for Sale at Halle— 
Luther’s Safety and Place of Refuge Becomes Privately 
Known—His New Protest Against Indulgence-mongers—Its 
Effect—Augustine Monks Abandoning Monkish Life—Effect 
of the Proceeding—Domestic Matters — The Sacramental 
Supper Observed in German—The Mother Leads the Way— 

The Zwickau Prophets—Another Cause of Excitement— 

Eva Finally Reaches Home...287 

PART XVIII. 

Elbe’s Story. —Luther Reappears in Wittenberg—He Meets the 
People Again in the Pulpit—The Scene—His Sermon—Its 
Effect—Other Sermons and Their Effect—A Family Discus¬ 
sion—Luther and Zwickian Prophets—They Leave Witten¬ 
berg. Atlantis’ Story.— Concerning Herself—Her Copy 
of Kessler’s Narrative: The Black Bear Inn; Luther in Dis¬ 
guise; His Place of Refuge Discovered. Eva’s Story.— 
Wittenberg and Her Friends—September 21, 1522—The 
German New Testament Published. Thekla’s Story. — 
Hears Again from Bertrand—More of the German New Tes¬ 
tament—A Scene—Fritz Suddenly Appears Among Them, 
Having Escaped from Prison. Fritz’s Story.— December 
1, 1522—He and Eva Become Betrothed, and in a Few 
Weeks to be Married—The Relations of Monkish and Con¬ 
vent Life to this Event—Their Future Home—What Eva 
has to Say. Else’s Story.— The Interest taken in the Mar¬ 
riage of Fritz and Eva—Atlantis and Conrad—A Visit of 
Hussites—The Pairs Married—Their Departure from Home 
—Nine of Eva’s Friends Escape from the Convent—Cather¬ 
ine von Bora the Guest of the Cottas.305 

PART XIX. 

Eva’s Story. —Their Life Among the People—Chriemhild and 
Ulrich—Priest Ruprecht Reappears—The Woman Bertha 
Brought to Fritz’s House—The Priest and Woman Married. 
Else’s Story— Death of the Grandmother — Troublous Times 
—Uneasiness among the Peasantry—The Zwickau Prophets 
Again—The Peasants in Open Revolt—How Fritz and Luther 
Act—The Revolt Suppressed—Luther and Catherine von 
Bora the Escaped Nun—The Elector’s Death—Its Effect— 
Luther and Catherine Married, June 23, 1525—Thekla’s 
Lover, Bertrand, Dies in Prison—Divisions Among Reform¬ 
ed Christians—Luther and his Home—Else Visits Eva; Par¬ 
sonage Scenes—The Gersdorfs—Fritz at Home. Thekla’s 
Story.— Her Sore Trial in the Loss of Bertrand... bio 




CONTENTS. 


V 


PART XX. 


Page. 


Elbe’s Story. — A Convent Becomes a Nursery—Luther m a 
Father and Husband—His Differences with Others of the Re¬ 
formers—His Interest in Children—His Love for a Daughter 
—Germany and Luther. Thekla’s Story —Effect of Her 
Affliction—Her School—Christmas—Luther’s Favorite Child 
Sickens and Dies. The Mother’s Story. —What She Says 


of Her Children 


374 


PART XXI. 


Eva’s and Agnes’ Story. — A Lutheran Home. Thekla’s 
Story. —Luther—He Completes his Commentary on Genesis 
—Affecting Incident Connected with It—He Goes to Eisleben 
—His Wife’s Foreboding—Letters to Her—He Succeeds in 
his Mission, the Adjustment of Differences among his 
Friends. Fritz’s Story. —Of Luther’s Visit to them at 
Eisleben—Interesting Interview—Concern about Luther’s 
Health—February 18, 1543, Luther taken Suddenly Ill and 
Dies—His Last Hours. Else’s Story. —Luther’s Funeral, 
and Honors Paid to his Memory—Conclusion of the Family 


History 


403 








\ 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


PAET I. 
else’s story. 

Friedrich wishes me to write a chronicle of my life. 
Friedrich is my eldest brother. I am sixteen, and he is 
seventeen, and I have always been in the habit of doing 
what-he wishes; and therefore, although it seems to me a 
very strange idea, I do so now. It is easy for Friedrich to 
write a chronicle, or anything else, because he has thoughts. 
But I have so few thoughts, I can only write what I see 
and hear about people and things. And that is certainly 
very little to write about, because everything goes on so 
much the same always with us. The people around me 
are the same I have known since I was a baby, and the 
things have changed very little; except that the people are 
more, because there are so many little children in our home 
now, and the things seem to me to become less, because my 
father does not grow richer; and there are more to clothe 
and feed. However, since Fritz wishes it, I will try; es¬ 
pecially as ink and paper are the two things which are 
plentiful among us, because my father is a printer. 

Fritz and I have never been separated all our lives until 
now. Yesterday he went to the university at Erfurt. It 
was when I was crying at the thought of parting with him 
that he told me his plan about the chronicle. He is to 
write one, and I another. He said it would be a help to 
him, as our twilight talk has been—when always, ever since 
I can remember, we two have crept away, in summer into 
the garden, under the great pear tree, and in winter into 
the deep window of the lumber-room inside my father’s 

Note. —The first portions of the Chronicle, before the Reformation 
openly commenced, are necessarily written from a Roman Catholic 
point of view. 




THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY, 


a 


printing-room, where the bales of paper are kept, and old 
books are piled np, among which we used to make ourselves 
a seat. 

It may be a help and comfort to Fritz, but I don’t see 
how it ever can be any to me. He had all the thoughts, 
and he will have them still; but I, what shall I have for his 
voice and his dear face, but cold, blank paper, and no 
thoughts at all! Besides, I am so very busy, being the 
eldest; and the mother is far from strong, and the father 
so often wants me to help him at his types, or to read to 
him while he sets them. However, Fritz wishes it, and I 
shall do it. I wonder what his chronicle will be like! 

But where am I to begin. What is a chronicle? Four 
of the books in the Bible are called Chronicles in Latin, and 
the first book begins with Adam, I know, because I read it 
one day to my father for his printing. But Fritz certainly 
cannot mean me to begin as far back as that. Of course, I 
could not remember. I think I had better begin with the 
oldest person I know, because she is the furthest on the 
way back to Adam; and that is our grandmother Von 
Schonberg. She is very old—more than sixty—but her form 
is so erect, and her dark eyes so piercing, that sometimes 
she looks almost younger than her daughter, our precious 
mother, who is often bowed down with ill-health and cares. 

Our grandmother’s father was of a noble Bohemian 
family, and that is what links us with the nobles, although 
my father’s family belongs to the burgher class. Fritz and 
I like to look at the old seal of our grandfather Von Schon- 
berg, with all its quarterings, and to hear the tales of our 
knightly and soldier ancestors—of crusader and baron. My 
mother, indeed, tells us this is a mean pride, and that my 
father’s printing-press is a symbol of a truer nobility than 
any crest of battle,-axe or sword; but our grandmother, I 
know, thinks it. a great condescension for a Schonberg to 
have married into a burgher family. Fritz feels with my 
mother, and says the true crusade will be waged by our 
father’s black types far better than by our great-grand¬ 
father’s lances. But the old warfare was so beautiful, with 
the prancing horses and the streaming banners! And I 
cannot help thinking it would have been pleasanter to sit 
at the window of some grand old castle like the Wartburg, 
which towers above our town, and wave my hand to Fritz, 


the schonberg-cotta family. 


3 


as he rode, in flashing armor, on his war-horse, down the 
steep hillside, instead of climbing np on piles of dusty 
books at our lumber-room window, and watching him, in 
his humble burgher dress, with his wallet (not too well 
filled), walk down the street, while no one turned to look. 
Ah, well! the parting would have been as dreary, and Fritz 
himself could not be nobler. Only I cannot help seeing 
that people do honor the bindings and the gilded titles, in 
spite of all my mother and Fritz can say; and I should like 
my precious book to have such a binding, that the people 
who could not read the inside, might yet stop to look at the 
gold clasps and the jeweled back. To those who can read 
the inside, perhaps it would not matter. For of all the old 
barons and crusades my grandmother tells us of, I know 
well none ever were or looked nobler than our Fritz. His 
eyes are not blue, like mine—which are only German 
Cotta eyes, but dark and flashing. Mine are very good for 
seeing, sewing, and helping about the printing; but his, I 
think, would penetrate men’s hearts and command them, 
or survey a battlefield at a glance. 

Last week, however, when I said something of the kind 
to him, he laughed and said there were better battlefields 
than those on which men’s bones lay bleaching; and then 
there came that deep look into his eyes, when he seems to 
see into a world beyond my reach. 

But I began with our grandmother, and here I am think¬ 
ing about Friedrich again. I am afraid that will be the 
beginning and the end of my chronicle. Fritz has been 
nearly all the world to me. I wonder if that is why he is 
to leave me. The monks say we must not love any one too 
much; and one day, when we went to see Aunt Agnes, my 
mother’s only sister, who is a nun in the convent of 
Nimptschen, I remember her saying to me when I had been 
admiring the flowers in the convent garden, “ Little Else, 
will you come and live with us, and be a happy, blessed 
sister here?” 

I said, “ Whose sister, Aunt Agnes? I am Fritz’s sister! 
May Fritz come too?” 

“Fritz could go into the monastery at Eisenach,” she 
said. 

“Then I would go with him,” I said. “I am Fritz’s 
sister, and I would go nowhere in the world without him.” 

She looked on me with a cold, grave pity, and murmured, 


4 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“ Poor little one, she is like her mother; the heart learns to 
idolize early. She has much to unlearn. God’s hand is 
against all idols.” 

That is many years ago; but I remember, as if it were 
yesterday, how the fair convent garden seemed to me all at 
once to grow dull and cheerless at her words and her grave 
looks, and I felt it damp and cold, like a churchyard; and 
the flowers looked like made flowers; and the walls seemed/ 
to rise like the walls of a cave, and I scarcely breathed until 
I was outside again, and had hold of Fritz’s hand. 

For I am not at all religious. I am afraid I do not even 
wish to be. All the religious men and women I have ever 
seen do not seem to me half so sweet as my poor dear 
mother; nor as kind, clever, and cheerful as my father; nor 
half as noble and good as Fritz. And the lives of the 
saints puzzle me exceedingly, because it seems to me that 
if every one were to follow the example of St. Catherine, 
and even our own St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and disobey 
their parents, and leave their little children, it would make 
everything so very wrong and confused. I wonder if any 
one else ever felt the same, because these are thoughts I 
have never even told to Fritz; for he is religious, and I am 
afraid it would pain him. 

Our grandmother’s husband fled from Bohemia on ac¬ 
count of religion; but I am afraid it was not the right kind 
of religion, because no one seems to like to speak about it; 
and what Fritz and I know about him is only what we have 
picked up from time to time, and put together for ourselves. 

Nearly a hundred years ago, two priests preached in 
Bohemia, called John Huss and Jerome of Prague. They 
seem to have been dearly beloved, and to have been thought 
good men during their lifetime; but people must have 
been mistaken about them, for they were both burned alive 
as heretics at Constance in two following years—in 1415 and 
1416; which of course proves that they could not have been 
good men, but exceedingly bad. 

However, their friends in Bohemia would not give up 
believing what they had learned of these men, although they 
had seen what end it led to. I do not think this was strange, 
because it is so very difficult to make one’s self believe 
what one ought, as it is, and I do not see that the fear of 
being burned even would help one to do it; although, cer- 



THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


5 


tainly, it might keep one silent. But these friends of John 
Huss were many of them nobles and great men, who were 
‘not accustomed to conceal their thoughts, and they would 
not be silent about what Huss had taught them. What 
this was Fritz and I never could find out, because my 
grandmother, who answers all our other questions, never 
would tell us a word about this. We are, therefore, afraid 
it must be something very wicked indeed. And yet, when 
I asked one day if our grandfather, who, we think, had 
followed Huss, was a wicked man, her eyes flashed like 
lightning and she said vehemently: 

“ Better never lived or died!” 

This perplexes us, but perhaps we shall understand it r 
like so many other things, when we are older. 

Great troubles followed on the death of Huss. Bohemia 
was divided into three parties, who fought against each 
other. Castles were sacked, and noble women and little 
children were driven into caves and forests. Our forefathers 
were among the sufferers. In 1458 the conflict reached its 
height; many were beheaded, hung, burned alive, or tor¬ 
tured. My grandfather was killed as he was escaping, and 
my grandmother encountered great dangers, and lost all the 
little property which was left her, in reaching Eisenach, a 
young widow with two little children, my mother and Aunt 
Agnes. 

Whatever it was that my great-grandfather believed 
wrong, his wife did not seem to share it. She took refuge 
in the Augustinian convent, where she lived until my 
Aunt Agnes took the veil, and my mother was married, 
when she came to live with us. She is as fond of Fritz as 
I am, in her way; although she scolds us all in turn, which 
is perhaps a good thing, because, as she says, no one else 
does. And she has taught me nearly all I know, except 
the apostles’ creed and ten commandments, which our 
father taught us, and the paternoster and ave Mary which we 
learned at our mother’s knee. Fritz, of course," knows in¬ 
finitely more than I do. He can say the Cisio Janus (the 
church calendar) through without one mistake, and also 
the Latin grammar, I believe; and he has read Latin books 
of which I cannot remember the names; and he understands 
all that the priests read and sing, and can sing himself as 
well as any of them. 

But the legends of the saints, and the multiplication 


6 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


table, and the names of herbs and flowers, and the account 
of the holy sepulcher, and of the pilgrimage to Rome— 
all these our grandmother has taught us. She looks so 
beautiful, our dear old grandmother, as she sits by the 
stove with her knitting, and talks to Fritz and me, with 
her lovely white hair and her dark bright eyes, so full of 
life and youth, they make us think of the fire on the 
hearth when the snow is on the roof, all warm within, or, 
as Fritz says: 

“It seems as if her heart lived always in the summer, and 
the winter of old age could only touch her body.” 

But I think the summer in which our grandmother’s 
soul lives must be rather a fiery kind of summer, in which 
there are lightnings as well as sunshine. Fritz thinks we 
shall know her again at the resurrection day by that look 
in her eyes, only perhaps a little softened. But that seems 
to me terrible, and very far off; and I do not like to think 
of it. We often debate which of the saints she is like. I 
think St. Anna, the mother of Mary, mother of God, but 
Fritz thinks St. Catherine o^ Egypt, because she is so like 
a queen. 

Besides all this, I had nearly forgotten to say I know the 
names of several of the stars, which Fritz taught me. And 
I can knit and spin, and do point stitch, and embroider a 
little. I intend to teach it all to the children. There are 
a great many children in our home, and more every year. 
If there had not been so many, I might have had time to 
learn more, and also to be more religious; but I cannot 
see what they would do at home if I were to have a voca¬ 
tion. Perhaps some of the younger ones may be spared to 
become saints. I wonder if this should turn out to be so, 
and if I help them, if any one ever found some little hum¬ 
ble place in heaven for helping some one else to be religious! 
Because then there might perhaps be hope for me after all. 

Our father is the wisest man in Eisenach. The mother 
thinks, perhaps, in the world. Of this, however, our 
grandmother has doubts. She has seen other places beside 
Eisenach, which is perhaps the reason. He certainly is the 
wisest man I ever saw. He talks about more things that I 
cannot understand than any one else I know. He is also a 
great inventor. He thought of the plan of printing books 
before any one else, and had almost completed the inven- 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


tion before any press was set up. And he always believed 
there was another world on the other side of the great sea, 
long before the Admiral Christopher Columbus discovered 
America. The only misfortune has been that some one 
else has always stepped in just before he had completed his 
inventions, when nothing but some little insignificant de¬ 
tail was wanting to make everything perfect, and carried 
off all the credit and profit. It is this which has kept us 
from becoming rich—this and the children. But the 
father’s temper is so placid and even, nothing ever sours it. 
And this is what makes us all admire and love him so 
much, even more than his great abilities. He seems to re¬ 
joice in these successes of other people just as much as if 
he had quite succeeded in making them himself. If the 
mother laments a little over the fame that might have been 
his he smiles and says: 

“Never mind, little mother. It will be all the same a 
hundred years hence. Let us not grudge any one his re¬ 
ward. The world has the benefit if we have not.” 

Then if the mother sighs a little over the scanty larder 
and wardrobe, he replies: 

“ Cheer up, little mother, there are more Americas yet 
to be discovered, and more inventions to be made. In 
fact,” he adds, with that deep, far-seeing look of his, 
“something else has just occurred to me, which, when I 
have brought it to perfection, will throw all the discoveries 
of this and every other age into the shade.” 

And he kisses the mother and departs into his printing- 
room. And the mother looks wonderingly after him, and 
says: , 

“We must not disturb the father, children, with our lit¬ 
tle cares. He has great things in his mind, which we shall 
all reap the harvest of some day.” 

So she goes to patch some little garment once more, and 
to try to make one day’s dinner expand into enough for 
two. 

What the father’s great discovery is at present, Fritz and 
I do not quite know. But we think it has something to do, 
either with the planets and the stars, or with that wonder- 
ful stone the philosophers have been so long occupied 
about. In either case, it is sure to make us enormously 
rich all at once; and, meantime, we may well be content 
to eke out our living as best we can. 


8 


TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Of the mother I cannot think of anything to say. She 
is just the mother—our own dear, patient, loving, little 
mother—unlike every one else in the world; and yet it 
seems as if there was nothing to say about her by which 
one could make any one else understand what she is. It 
seems as if she were to other people (with reverence I say 
it) just what the blessed mother of God is to the other 
saints. St. Catherine has her wheel and her crown, and 
St. Agnes her lamb and her palm, and St. Ursula her eleven 
thousand virgins; but Mary, the ever-blessed, has only the 
Holy Child. She is the blessed woman, the holy mother and 
nothing else. That is just what the mother is. She is the 
precious little mother, and the best woman in the world, 
and that is all. I could describe her better by saying what 
she is not. She never says a harsh word to any one or of 
any one. She is never impatient with the father, like our 
grandmother. She is never impatient with the children, 
like me. She never complains or scolds. She is never idle. 
She never looks severe and cross at us, like Aunt Agnes. 
But I must not compare her with Aunt Agnes, because she 
herself once reproved me for doing so; she said Aunt 
Agnes was a religious, a pure, and holy woman, far, far 
above her sphere or ours; and we might be thankful, if we 
ever reached heaven, if she let us kiss the hem of her 
garment. 

Yes, Aunt Agnes is a holy woman—a nun; I must be 
careful what I say of her. She makes long, long prayers, 
they say—so long that she has been found in the morning 
fainting on the cold floor of the convent church. She eats 
so little that Father Christopher, who is the convent con¬ 
fessor and ours, says he sometimes thinks she must be 
sustained by angels. But Fritz and I think that, if that is 
true, the angels’ food cannot be very nourishing; for when 
we saw her last, through the convent grating, she looked 
like a shadow in her black robe, or like that dreadful pic¬ 
ture of death we saw in the convent chapel. She wears 
the coarsest sackcloth, and often, they say, sleeps on ashes. 
One of the nuns told my mother, that one day when she 
fainted, and they had to unloose her dress, they found scars 
and stripes, scarcely healed, on her fair neck and arms, 
which she must have inflicted on herself. They all say she 
will have a very high place in heaven; but it seems to me, 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


9 


unless there is a very great difference between the highest 
and lowest places in heaven, it is a great deal of trouble to 
take. But, then, I am not religious; and it is altogether 
so exceedingly difficult to me to understand about heaven. 
Will every one in heaven be always struggling for the high 
places? Because when every one does that at church on 
the great festival days, it is not at all pleasant; those who 
succeed look proud, and those who fail look cross. But, of 
course, no one will be cross in heaven, nor proud. Then 
how will the saints feel who do not get the highest places? 
Will they be pleased or disappointed? 

If they are pleased, what is the use of struggling so 
much to climb a little higher? And if they are not 
pleased, would that be saint-like? Because the mother 
always teaches us to choose the lowest places, and the eldest 
to give up to the little ones. Will the greatest, then, not 
give up to the little ones in heaven? Of one thing I feel 
sure: if the mother had a high place in heaven, she would 
always be stooping down to help some one else up, or mak¬ 
ing room for others. And then, what are the highest 
places in heaven? At the emperor’s court, I know, they 
are the places nearest him; the seven electors stand close 
around the throne. But can it be possible that any would 
ever feel at ease, and happy so very near the Almighty? 
It seems so exceedingly difficult to please Him here, and 
so very easy to offend Him, that it does seem to me it 
would be happier to be a little further off, in some little quiet 
corner near the gate, with a good many of the saints be¬ 
tween. The other day, Father Christopher ordered me 
such a severe penance for dropping a crumb of the sacred 
Host; although I could not help thinking it was as much the 
priest’s fault as mine. But he said God would be exceed¬ 
ingly displeased; and Fritz told me the priests fast and 
torment themselves severely sometimes, for only omitting 
a word in the mass. 

Then the awful picture of the Lord Christ, with the 
lightnings in his hand! It is very different from the carv¬ 
ing of him on the cross. Why did he suffer so? Was it, 
like Aunt Agnes, to get a higher place in heaven? or, per¬ 
haps to have the right to be severe, as she is with us? 
Such very strange things seem to offend and please God, I 
cannot understand it at all; but that is because I have no 
vocation for religion. In the convent, the mother says, 
they £row like God, and so understand him better. 


10 


THE SCIIONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Is Aunt Agnes, then, more like God than onr mother? 
That face, still and pale as death*, those cold, severe eyes; 
that voice, so hollow and monotonous, as if it came from a 
metal tube or a sepulcher, instead of from a heart! Is it 
with that look God will meet us, with that kind of voice 
he will speak to us? Indeed, the judgment day is very 
dreadful to think of; and one must indeed need to live 
many years in the convent not to he afraid of going to 
heaven. 

Oh, if only our mother were the saint—the kind of good 
woman that pleased God—instead of Aunt Agnes, how 
sweet it would be to try and be a saint then; and how sure 
one would feel that one might hope to reach heaven, and 
that, if one reached it, one would be happy there! 

Aunt Ursula Cotta is another of the women I wish were 
the right kind of saint. She is my father’s first cousin’s 
wife; but we have always called her aunt, because almost 
all little children who know her do—she is so fond of chil¬ 
dren, and so kind to every one. She is not poor like us, 
although Cousin Conrad Cotta never made any discoveries, 
or even nearly made any. There is a picture of St. Eliza¬ 
beth, of Thuringia, our sainted landgravine, in our parish 
church, which always makes me think of Aunt Ursula. 
St. Elizabeth is standing at the gate of a beautiful castle, 
something like our castle of the Wartburg, and around her 
are kneeling a crowd of very poor people—cripples, and 
blind, and poor thin mothers, with little liungry-looking 
children—all stretching out their hands to the lady, who 
is looking on with such kindly, compassionate looks, just 
like Aunt Ursula; except that St. Elizabeth is very thin 
and pale, and looks almost as nearly starved as the beggars 
around her, and Aunt Ursula is rosy and fat, with the 
pleasantest dimples in her round face. But the look in the 
eyes is the same—so loving, and true, and earnest, and com¬ 
passionate. The thinness and pallor are, of course, only 
just the difference there must be between a saint who 
fasts, and does so much penance, and keeps herself awake 
whole nights saying prayers, as St. Elizabeth did, and a 
prosperous burgher’s wife, who eats and sleeps like other 
people, and is only like the good landgravine in being so 
kind to every one. 

The other half of the story of the picture, however, 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


11 


would not do for Aunt Ursula. In the apron of the saint, 
instead of loaves of bread are beautiful clusters of red roses. 
Our grandmother told us the meaning of this. The good 
landgravine’s husband did not quite like her giving so 
much to the poor; because she was so generous she would 
have left the treasury bare. So she used to give her alms 
unknown to him. But on this day when she was giving 
away those loaves to the beggar at the castle gate, he hap¬ 
pened suddenly to return, and finding her occupied in this 
way, he asked her rather severely what she had in her 
apron. She said “Boses!” 

“Let me see,” said the landgrave. 

And God loved her so much, that to save her from being 
blamed, he wrought a miracle. When she opened her 
apron, instead of the loaves she had been distributing, 
there were beautiful flowers. And this is what the picture 
represents. I always wanted to know the end of the story. 
I hope God worked another miracle when the landgrave 
went away, and changed the roses back into loaves. I sup¬ 
pose He did, because the starving people look so contented. 
But our grandmother does not know. Only in this, I do 
not think Aunt Ursula would have done the same as the 
landgravine. I think she would have said boldly if 
Cousin Cotta had asked her, “I have loaves in my apron, 
and 1 am giving them to these poor starving subjects of 
yours and mine,” and never been afraid of what he would 
say. And then, perhaps, Cousin Cotta—I mean the land¬ 
grave’s—heart would have been so touched, that he would 
have forgiven her, and even praised her, and brought her 
some more loaves. And then instead of the bread being 
changed to flowers, the landgrave’s heart would have been 
changed from stone to flesh, which does seem a better 
thing. But when I once said this to grandmother, she 
said it was very wrong to fancy other ends to the legends 
of the saints, just as if they were fairy tales; that St. 
Elizabeth really lived in that old castle of the Wartburg 
little more than a hundred years ago, and walked through 
those very streets of Eisenach, and gave aims to the poor 
here, and went into the hospitals, and dressed the most 
loathsome wounds that no one else would touch, and spoke 
tender, loving words to wretched outcasts no one else would 
look at. That seems to me so good and dear of her; but 
that is not what made her a saint, because Aunt Ursula and 


12 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY,\ 


our mother do things like that, and our mother has told me 
again and again that it is Aunt Agnes who is like the saint 
and not she. 

It is what she suffered, I suppose, that has made them 
put her in the calendar; and yet it is not suffering in itself 
that makes people saints, because I don’t believe St. Eliza¬ 
beth herself suffered more than our mother. It is true she 
used to leave her husband’s side and kneel all night on the 
cold floor, while he was asleep. But the mother has done 
the same as that often and often. When any of the little 
ones has been ill, how often she has walked up and down 
hour after hour, with the sick child in her arms, soothing 
and fondling it, and quieting all its fretful cries with un¬ 
wearying, tender patience. Then St. Elizabeth fasted until 
she was almost a shadow; but how often have I seen our 
mother quietly distribute all that was nice and good in our 
frugal meals to my father and the children, scarcely leaving 
herself a bit, and hiding her plate behind a dish that the 
father might not see. And Fritz and I often say how 
wasted and worn she looks; not like the mother of mercy 
as we remember her, but too much like the wan, pale 
Mother of Sorrows with the pierced heart. Then as to 
pain, have not I seen our mother suffer pain compared with 
which Aunt Agnes or St. Elizabeth’s discipline must be 
like the prick of a pin? 

But yet all that is not the right kind of suffering to 
make a saint. Our precious mother walks up and down all 
night not to make herself a saint, but to soothe her sick 
child. She eats no dinner, not because she chooses to 
fast, but because we are poor, and bread is dear. She 
suffers, because God lays suffering upon her, not because 
she takes it on herself. And all this cannot make her a 
saint. When I say anything to compassionate or to honor 
her, she smiles and says: 

“ My Else, I chose this lower life instead of the high vo¬ 
cation of your Aunt Agnes, and I must take the conse¬ 
quences. We cannot have our portion both in this world 
and the next.” 

If the size of our mother’s portion in the next world 
were to be in proportion to its smallness in this, I think she 
might have plenty to spare; but this I do not venture to 
sav to her. 

There is one thing St. Elizabeth did which certainly our 


THE SC110NBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


13 


mother would never do. She left her little fatherless chil¬ 
dren to go into a convent. Perhaps it was this that pleased 
God and the Lord Jesus Christ so very much, that they 
took her up to be so high in heaven. If this is the case, it 
is a great mercy for our father and for us that our mother 
has not set her heart on being a saint. We sometimes 
think, however, that perhaps although He cannot make 
her a saint on account of the rules they have in heaven 
aLout it, God may give our mother some little good thing, 
or some kind word, because of her being so very good to us. 
She says this is no merit, however, because it is her loving 
us so much. If she loved us less, and so found it more a 
trouble to work for us; or if we were little stranger beggar 
children she chose to be kind to, instead of her own, I sup¬ 
pose God would like it better. 

There is one thing, moreover, in St. Elizabeth’s history 
which once brought Fritz and me into great trouble and 
perplexity. When we were little children, and did not 
understand things as we do now, but thought we ought to 
try and imitate the saints, and that what was right for 
them must be right for us, and when our grandmother had 
been telling us about the holy landgravine privately selling 
her jewels, and emptying her husband’s treasury to feed 
the poor, we resolved one day to go and do likewise. We 
knew a very poor old woman in the next street, with a 
great many orphan grandchildren, and we planned a long 
time together before we thought of the way to help her like 
St. Elizabeth. At length the opportunity came. It was 
Christmas eve, and for a rarity there were some meat, and 
apples, and pies in our storeroom. We crept into the 
room in the twilight, filled our aprons with pies, and meat, 
and cakes, and stole out to our old woman’s to give her our 
booty. 

The next morning the larder was found despoiled of half 
of what was to have been our Christmas dinner. The chil¬ 
dren cried, and the mother looked almost as distressed as 
they did. The father’s placid temper for once was roused, 
and he cursed the cat and the rats, and wished he had 
completed his new infallible rat trap. Our grandmother 
said very quietly: 

“Thieves more discriminating than rats or mice have 
been here. There are no crumbs, and not a thing is out of 
place. Besides, I never heard of rats or mice eating pie- 
dishes.” 


14 THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

Fritz and I looked at each other, and began to fear we 
had done wrong, when little Christopher said: 

“I saw Fritz and Else carry out the pies last night.” 

“Else! Fritz!” said our father, “what does this mean?” 

I would have confessed, but I remembered St. Elizabeth 
and the roses, and said, with a trembling voice: 

“They were not pies you saw, Christopher, but roses.” 

“Koses,” said the mother very gravely, “at Christmas!” 

I almost hoped the pies would have reappeared on the 
shelves. It was the very juncture at which they did in the 
legend; but they did not. On the contrary everything 
seemed to turn against us. 

“Fritz,” said our father, very sternly, “tell the truth, or 
I shall give you a flogging.” 

This was a part of the story where St. Elizabeth’s ex¬ 
ample quite failed us. I did not know what she would 
have done if some one else had been punished for her gen¬ 
erosity; but I felt no doubt what I must do. 

“ Oh, father!” I said, “ it is my fault—it was my thought! 
We took these things to the poor old woman in the next 
street for her grandchildren.” 

“Then she is no better than a thief,” said our father, 
“to have taken them. Fritz and Else, foolish children, 
shall have no Christmas dinner for their pains; and Else 
shall, moreover, be locked into her own room, for telling a 
story.” 

I was sitting shivering in my room, wondering how it 
was that things succeeded so differently with St. Elizabeth 
and with us, when Aunt Ursula’s round, pleasant voice 
sounded up the stairs, and in another minute she was hold¬ 
ing me laughing in her arms. 

“My poor little Else! We must wait a little before we 
imitate our patron saint; or we must begin at the other 
end. It would never do, for instance, for me to travel to 
Rome with eleven thousand young ladies like St. 
Ursula.” 

My grandmother had guessed the meaning of our foray, 
and Aunt Ursula coming in at the time, had heard the 
narrative, and insisted on sending us another Christmas 
dinner. Fritz and I secretly believed that St. Elizabeth 
had a good deal to do with the replacing of our Christmas 
dinner; but after that, we understood that caution was 
needed in transferring the holy example of the saints to our 


TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


15 


own lives, and that at present we must not venture beyond 
the ten commandments. 

Yet to think that St. Elizabeth, a real canonized saint— 
whose picture is over altars in the churches—whose good 
deeds are painted on the church windows, and illumined by 
the sun shining through them—whose bones are laid up in 
reliquaries, one of which I wear always next my heart— 
actually lived and prayed in that dark old castle above us, 
and walked along these very streets—perhaps even had been 
seen from this window of Fritz’s and my beloved lumber- 
room. 

Only a hundred years ago! If only I had lived a hun¬ 
dred years earlier, or she a hundred years later, I might 
have seen her and talked to her, and asked her what it was 
that made her a saint. There are so many questions I 
should like to have asked her. I would have said, “ Dear 
St.. Elizabeth, tell me what it is that makes you a saint? 
It cannot be your charity, because no one can be more 
charitable than Aunt Ursula, and she is not a saint; and it 
cannot be your sufferings, or your patience, or your love, 
or your denying yourself for the sake of others, because our 
mother is like you in all that, and she is not a saint. Was 
it because you left your little children, that God loves you 
so much? or because you not only did and bore the things 
God laid on you, as our mother does but chose out other 
things for yourself, which you thought harder?” And if 
she were gentle (as I think she was), and would have lis¬ 
tened, I would have asked her, “Holy landgravine, why 
are things which were so right and holy in you, wrong for 
Fritz and me?” And I would also have asked her, “Dear 
St. Elizabeth, my patroness, what is it in heaven that 
makes you so happy there?” 

But I forgot—she would not have been in heaven at all. 
She would not even have been made a saint, because it was 
only after her death, when the sick and crippled were 
healed by touching her body, that they found out what 
a saint she had been. Perhaps, even, she would not her¬ 
self have known she was a saint. And if so, I wonder if it 
can be possible that our mother is a saint after all, only she 
does not know it! 

Fritz and I are four or five years older than any of the 
children. Two little sisters died of the plague before any 


16 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


more were born. One was baptized, and died when she 
was a year old, before she could soil her baptismal robes. 
Therefore we feel sure she is in paradise. I think of her 
whenever I look at the cloud of glory around the blessed 
Virgin in St. George’s church. Out of the cloud peep a 
number of happy child-faces—some leaning their round 
soft cheeks on their pretty dimpled hands, and all looking 
up with such confidence at the dear mother of God. I 
suppose the little children in heaven especially belong to 
her. It must be very happy, then, to have died young. 

But of that other little nameless babe who died at the 
same time none of us ever dare to speak. It was not bap¬ 
tized, and they say the souls of little unbaptized babes 
hover about forever in the darkness between heaven and 
hell. Think of the horror of falling from the loving arms 
of our mother into the cold and the darkness, to shiver and 
wail there forever, and belong to no one. At Eisenach 
we have a Foundling hospital, attached to one of the nun¬ 
neries founded by St. Elizabeth, for such forsaken little 
ones. If St. Elizabeth could only establish a Foundling 
somewhere near the gates of paradise for such little name¬ 
less outcast child-souls! But I suppose she is too high in 
heaven, and too far from the gates to hear the plaintive 
cries of such abandoned little ones. Or perhaps God, who 
was so much pleased with her for deserting her own little 
children, would not allow it. I suppose the saints in 
heaven who have been mothers, or even elder sisters like 
me, leave their mother’s hearts on earth, and that in para¬ 
dise they are all monks and nuns like Aunt Agnes and 
Father Christopher. 

Next to that little nameless one came the twin girls 
Chriemhild, named after our grandmother, and Atlantis, so 
christened by our father on account of the discovery of the 
great world beyond the sea, which he had so often thought 
of, and which the great admiral, Christopher Columbus, 
accomplished about that time. Then the twin boys Boni¬ 
face Pollux and Christopher Castor; their names being a 
compromise between our father, who was struck with some 
remarkable conjunction of their stars at their birth, and 
my mother, who thought it only right to counterbalance 
such pagan appellations with names written in heaven. 
Then another boy, who only lived a few weeks; and then 
the present baby, Thekla, who is the plaything and darling 
of us all. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


17 


These are nearly all the people I know well, except, in¬ 
deed, Martin Luther, the miner’s son, to whom Aunt 
Ursula Cotta has been so kind. He is dear to us all as one 
of our own family. He is about the same age as Fritz, who 
thinks there is no one like him. And he has such a voice, 
and is so religious, and yet so merry withal; at least at 
times. It was his voice and his devout ways which first 
drew Aunt Ursula’s attention to him. She had seen him 
often at the daily prayers at church. He used to sing as a 
chorister with the boys of the Latin school of the parish of 
St. George, where Fritz and he studied. The ringing tones 
of his voice, so clear and true, often attracted Aunt 
Ursula’s attention; and he always seemed so devout. But 
we knew little about him. He was very poor, and had a 
pinched, half-starved look when first we noticed him. 
Often I have seen him on the cold winter evenings singing 
about the streets for alms, and thankfully receive a few 
pieces of broken bread and meat at the doors of the citi¬ 
zens; for he was never a bold and impudent beggar as some 
of the scholars are. Our acquaintance with him, however, 
began one day which I remember well. I was at Aunt 
Ursula’s house which is in George street, near the church 
and school. I had watched the choir of boys singing from 
door to door through the street. No one had given them 
anything: they looked disappointed and hungry. At last 
they stopped before the window where Aunt Ursula and I 
were sitting with her little boy. That clear, high, ringing 
voice was there again. Aunt Ursula went to the door and 
called Martin in, and then she went herself to the kitchen, 
and after giving him a good meal himself, sent him away 
with his wallet full, and told him to come again very soon. 
After that, I suppose she consulted with Cousin Conrad 
Cotta, and the result was that Martin Luther became an 
inmate of their house, and has lived among us familiarly 
since then like one of our own cousins. 

He is wonderfully changed since that day. Scarcely any 
one would have thought then what a joyous nature his is. 
The only thing in which it seemed then to flow out was 
in his clear true voice. He was subdued and timid like a 
creature that had been brought up without love. Especially 
he used to be shy with young maidens, and seemed afraid 
to look in a woman’s face. I think they must have been 
very severe with him at home. Indeed, he confessed to 


18 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Fritz that he had often, as a child, been beaten till the 
blood came, for trifling offenses, such as taking a nut, and 
that he was afraid to play in his parents’ presence. And 
yet he would not bear a word reflecting on his parents. He 
says his mother is the most pious woman in Mansfeld, 
where his family live, and his father denies himself in every 
way to maintain and educate his children, especially Martin, 
who is to be the learned man of the family. His parents 
are inured to hardship themselves, and believe it to be the 
best early discipline for boys. Certainly poor Martin had 
enough of hardship here. But that may be the fault of 
his mother’s relations at Eisenach, who, they hoped, would 
have been kind to him, but who do not seem to have cared 
for him at all. At one time he told Fritz he was so 
pinched and discouraged by the extreme poverty he suffered, 
that he thought of giving up study in despair, and return¬ 
ing to Mansfeld to work with his father at the smelting 
furnaces, or in the mines under the mountains. Yet in¬ 
dignant tears start to his eyes if any one ventures to hint 
that his father might have done more for him. He was a 
poor digger in the mines, he told Fritz, and often he had 
seen his mother carrying firewood on her shoulders from 
the pine woods near Mansfeld. 

But it was in the monastic schools, no doubt, that he 
learned to be so shy and grave. He had been taught to 
look on married life as a low and evil thing; and, of course, 
we all know it cannot be so high and pure as the life in the 
convent. I remember now his look of wonder when Aunt 
Ursula, who is not fond of monks, said to him one day, 
“There is nothing on earth more lovely than the love of 
husband and wife, when it is in the fear of God.” 

In the warmth of her bright and sunny heart, his whole 
nature seemed to open like the flowers in summer. And 
now there is none in all our circle so popular and sociable 
as he is. He plays on the lute, and sings as we think no 
one else can. And our children all love him, he tells them 
such strange, beautiful stories about enchanted gardens and 
crusaders, and about his own childhood, among the pine 
forests and the mines. 

It is from Martin Luther, indeed, that I have heard more 
than from any one else, except from our grandmother, of 
the great world beyond Eisenach. He has lived already in 
three other towns, so that he is quite a traveler, and 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


19 


knows a great deal of the world, although he is not yet 
twenty. Our father has certainly told us wonderful things 
about the great islands beyond the seas which the Admiral 
Columbus discovered, and which will one day, he is sure, 
be found to be only the other side of the Indies and Tokay 
and Araby. Already the Spaniards have found gold in 
those islands, and our father has little doubt that they are 
the Ophir from which King Solomon’s ship brought the 
gold for the temple. Also, he has told us about the 
strange lands in the south, in Africa, where the dwarfs live, 
and the black giants, and the great hairy men who climb 
the trees and make nests there, and the dreadful men- 
eaters, and the people who have their heads between their 
shoulders. But we have not yet met with any one who has 
seen all these wonders, so that Martin Luther and our 
grandmother are the greatest travelers Fritz and I are 
ac uainted with. 

lartin was born at Eisleben. His mother’s is a burgher 
family. Three of her brothers live here at Eisenach and 
here she was married. But his father came of a peasant 
race. His grandfather had a little farm of his own at 
Mora, among the Thuringian pine forests; but Martin’s 
father was the second son; their little property went to the 
eldest, and he became a miner, went to Eisleben, and then 
settled at Mansfeld, near the Hartz mountains, where the 
silver and copper lie buried in the earth. 

At Mansfeld Martin Luther lived until he was nineteen. 
I should like to see the place. It must be so strange to 
watch the great furnaces, where they fuse the copper and 
smelt the precious silver, gleaming through the pine woods, 
for they burn all through the night in the clearings of the 
forest. When Martin was a little boy he may have watched 
by them with his father, who now has furnaces and a foun¬ 
dry of his own. Then there are the deep pits under the 
hills, out of which come from time to time troops of grim- 
looking miners. Martin is fond of the miners; they are 
such a brave and hearty race, and they have fine bold songs 
and choruses of their own which he can sing, and wild, 
original pastimes. Chess is a favorite game with them. 
They are thoughtful, too, as men may well be who dive 
into the secrets of the earth. Martin, when a boy, has often 
gone into the dark, mysterious pits and winding caverns 
with them, and seen the veins of precious ore. He has 


20 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


also often seen foreigners of varions nations. They come 
from all parts of the world to Mansfeld for silver—from 
Bavaria and Switzerland, and even from the heantiful 
Venice, which is a city of palaces, where the streets are 
canals filled by the blue sea, and instead of wagons they use 
boats, from which people land on the marble steps of the 
palaces. All these things Martin has heard described by 
those who have really seen them, besides what he has seen 
himself. His father also frequently used to have the 
schoolmasters and learned men at his house, that his sons 
might profit by their wise conversation. But I doubt if he 
can have enjoyed this so much. It must have been diffi¬ 
cult to forget the rod with which once he was beaten four¬ 
teen times in one morning, so as to feel sufficiently at ease 
to enjoy their conversation. Old Count Gunther of 
Mansfeld thinks much of Martin’s father, and often used 
to send for him to consult him about the mines. 

Their house at Mansfeld stood at some distance from the 
schoolliouse, which was on the hill, so that, when he was 
little, an older boy used to be kind to him, and carry him 
in his arms to school. I dare say that was in winter, when 
his little feet were swollen with chilblains, and his poor 
mother used to go up to the woods to gather faggots for the 
hearth. 

His mother must be a very good and holy woman, but 
not, I fancy, quite like our mother; rather more like Aunt 
Agnes. I think I should have been rather afraid of her. 
Martin says she is very religious. He honors and loves her 
very much, although she was very strict with him, and 
once, he told Fritz, beat him, for taking a nut from their 
stores, until the blood came. She must be a brave, truth¬ 
ful woman, who would not spare herself or others; but I 
think I should have felt more at home with his father, who 
used so often to kneel beside Martin’s bed at night, and 
pray God to make him a good and useful man. (Martin’s 
father, however, does not seem so fond of the monks and 
nuns, and is therefore, I suppose, not so religious as his 
mother is. He does not at all wish Martin ito become a 
priest or a monk, but to be a great lawyer, or doctor, or 
professor at some university.) 

Mansfeld, however, is a very holy place. There are 
many monasteries and nunneries there, and in one ©f them 
two of the countesses were nuns. There is also a castle 


21 


THE SCHONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 

there, and our St. Elizabeth worked miracles there as well 
as here. The devil also is not idle at Mansfeld. A wicked 
old witch lived close to Martin’s house, and used to frighten 
and distress his mother much, bewitching the children so 
that they nearly cried themselves to death. Once even, it 
is said, the devil himself got up into the pulpit, and 
preached, of course in disguise. But in all the legends it is 
the same. The devil never seems so busy as where the 
saints are, which is another reason why I feel how difficult 
it would be to be religious. 

Martin had a sweet voice, and loved music as a child, and 
he used often to sing at people’s doors as he did here. 
Once, at Christmas time, he was singing carols from village 
to village among the woods with other boys, when a peasant 
came to the door of his hut, where they were singing, and 
said in a loud, gruff voice, “ Where are you, boys?” The 
children were so frightened that they scampered away as 
fast as they could, and only found out afterward that the 
man with a rough voice had a kind heart, and had brought 
them out some sausages. Poor Martin was used to blows 
in those days, and had good reason to dread them. It 
must have been pleasant, however, to hear the boys’ voices 
caroling through the woods about Jesus born at Bethle¬ 
hem. Voices echo so strangely among the silent pine 
forests. 

When Martin was thirteen he left Mansfeld and went to 
Magdeburg, where the archbishop Ernest lives, the brother 
of our elector, who has a beautiful palace, and twelve 
trumpeters to play to him always when he is at dinner. 
Magdeburg must be a magnificent city, very nearly, we 
think, as grand as Rome itself. There is a great cathedral 
there, and knights and princes and many soldiers, who 
prance about the streets; and tournaments and splendid 
festivals. But our Martin heard more than he saw of all 
this. He and John Reineck of Mansfeld (a boy older than 
himself, who is one of his greatest friends), went to the 
school of the Franciscan cloister, and had to spend their 
time with the monks, or sing about the streets for bread, 
or in the churchyard when the Franciscans in their gray 
robes went there to fulfill their office of burying the dead. 
But it was not for him, the miner’s son, to complain, when 
as he says, he used to see a prince of Anhalt going about 
the streets in a cowl-begging bread, with a sack on his 


22 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


shoulders like a beast of burden, insomuch that he was 
bowed to the ground. The poor prince, Martin said, had 
fasted and watched and mortified his flesh until he looked 
like an image of death, with only skin and bones. Indeed, 
shortly after he died. 

At Magdeburg also, Martin saw the picture of which he 
has often told us. “A great ship was painted, meant to 
signify the church, wherein there was no layman, not even 
a king or prince. There were none but the pope with his 
cardinals and bishops in the prow, with the Holy Ghost 
hovering over them, the priests and monks with their oars 
at the side; and thus they were sailing on heavenward. 
The laymen were swimming along in the water around the 
ship. Some of them were drowning; some were drawing 
themselves up to the ship by means of ropes, which the 
monks, moved with pity, and making over their own good 
works, did cast out to them to keep them from drowning, 
and to enable them to cleave to the vessel and to go with 
the others to heaven. There was no pope, nor cardinal, 
nor bishop, nor priest, nor monk in the water, but laymen 
only.” 

It must have been a very dreadful picture, and enough 
to make any one afraid of not being religious, or else to 
make one feel how useless it is for any one, except the 
monks and nuns, to try to be religious at all. Because 
however little merit any one had acquired, some kind monk 
might still be found to throw a rope out of the ship and 
help him in; and, however many good works any layman 
might do, they would be of no avail to help him out of the 
flood, or even to keep him from drowning, unless he had 
some friend in a cloister. 

I said Martin was merry; and so he is, with the children, 
or when he is cheered with music or singing. And yet, on 
the whole, I think he is rather grave, and often he looks 
very thoughtful, and even melancholy. His merriment 
does not seem to be so much from carelessness as from 
earnestness of heart, so that whether he is telling a story to 
the little ones, or singing a lively song, his whole heart is 
in it—in his play as well as in his work. 

In his studies Fritz says there is no one at Eisenach near 
him, whether in reciting, or writing prose or verse, or trans¬ 
lating, or church music. 

(Master Trebonius, the head of St. George’s school, is a 


THE SCHoNBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


23 


very learned man and very polite. He takes off his hat, 
Fritz says, and bows to his scholars when he enters the 
school, for he says that “among these boys are burgo¬ 
masters, chancellors, doctors, and magistrates.” This must 
be very different from the masters at Mansfeld. Master 
Trebonius thinks very much of Martin. I wonder if he 
and Fritz will be burgomasters or doctors one day. 

Martin is certainly very religious for a boy, and so is 
Fritz. They attend mass very regularly, and confession, 
and keep the fasts. 

From what I have heard Martin say, however, I think 
he is as much afraid of God and Christ and the dreadful 
day of wrath and judgment as I am. Indeed I am sure he 
feels, as every one must, there would be no hope for us 
were it not for the blessed mother of God who may remind 
her Son how she nursed and cared for him and move him 
to have some pity. 

But Martin has been at the University of Erfurt nearly 
two years, and Fritz has now left us to study there with 
him, and we shall have no more music, and the children no 
more stories until no one knows when. 

These are the people I know. I have nothing else to say 
except about the things I possess, and the place we live in. 

The things are easily described. I have a silver rel¬ 
iquary, with a lock of the hair of St. Elizabeth in it. 
That is my greatest treasure. I have a black rosary with a 
large iron cross which Aunt Agnes gave me. I have a 
missal, and part of a volume of the Nibelungen Lied; and 
besides my everyday dress, a black taffetas jacket and a 
crimson stuff petticoat, and two gold earrings, and a silver 
chain for holidays, which Aunt Ursula gave me. Fritz and 
I between us have also a copy of some old Latin hymns, 
with wood-cuts, printed at Nurnberg. And in the garden 
I have two rose bushes, and I have a wooden crucifix carved 
in Rome out of wood which came from Bethlehem, and in 
a leather purse one gulden my godmother gave me at my 
christening; and that is all. 

The place we live in is Eisenach, and I think it a beauti¬ 
ful place. But never having seen any other town, perhaps 
I cannot very well judge. There are nine monasteries and 
nunneries here, many of them founded by St. Elizabeth. 
And there are I do not know how many priests.. In the 
churches are some beautiful pictures of the sufferings and 


24 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY\ 


glory of the saints, and painted windows, and on the 
altars gorgeous gold and silver plate, and a great many 
wonderful relics which we go to adorn on the great saints’ 
days. 

The town is in a valley, and high above the houses rises 
the hill on which stands the Wartburg, the castle where St. 
Elizabeth lived. I went inside it once with oar father to 
take some books to the elector. The rooms were beauti¬ 
fully furnished with carpets and velvet covered chairs. A 
lady dressed in silk and jewels, like St. Elizabeth in the 
pictures, gave me sweetmeats. But the castle seemed to 
me dark and gloomy. I wondered which was the room in 
which the proud mother of the landgrave lived who was so 
discourteous to St. Elizabeth when she came a young 
maiden from her royal home far away in Hungary; and 
which was the cold wall against which she pressed her 
burning brow, when she rushed through the castle in de¬ 
spair on hearing suddenly of the death of her husband. 

I was glad to escape into the free forest again, for all 
around the castle, and over all the hills as far as we can see 
around Eisenach, it is forest. The tall dark pine woods 
clothe the hills; but in the valleys the meadows are very 
green beside the streams. It is better in the valleys among 
the wild flowers than in that stern old castle, and I did not 
wonder so much after being there that St. Elizabeth built 
herself a hut in a lowly valley among the woods, and pre¬ 
ferred to live and die there. 

It is beautiful in summer in the meadows, at the edge of 
the pine woods, when the sun brings out the delicious 
aromatic perfume of the pines, and the birds sing, and the 
rooks caw. I like it better than the incense in St. George’s 
church, and almost better than the singing of the choir, 
and certainly better than the sermons which are so often 
about the dreadful fires and the judgment day, or the con¬ 
fessional where they give us such hard penances. The 
lambs, and the birds, and even the insects, seem so happy, 
each with its own little bleat, or warble, or coo, or buzz of 
content. 

It almost seems then as if Mary, the dear mother of God, 
were governing the world instead of Christ, the Judge, or 
the Almighty with the thunders. Every creature seems so 
blithe and so tenderly cared for, I cannot help feeling bet¬ 
ter there than at church. But that is because I have so 
little religion. 


1HE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY- 


25 


PART II. 

EXTRACTS FROM FRIEDRICH’S CHRONICLE. 

Erfurt, 1503. 

At last I stand on the threshold of the world I have so 
long desired to enter. Else’s world is mine no longer; and 
yet, never until this week did I feel how dear that little 
home-world is to me. Indeed, heaven forbid I should 
have left it finally. I look forward to return to it again, 
never more, however, as a burden on our parents, but as 
their stay and support, to set our mother free from the 
cares which are slowly eating her precious life away, to set 
our father free to pursue his great projects, and to make 
our little Else as much a lady as any of the noble baron¬ 
esses our grandmother tells us of. Although, indeed, as it 
is, when she walks beside me to church on holidays, in her 
crimson dress, with her round, neat, little figure in the black 
jacket with the white stomacher and the silver chains, her 
fair hair so neatly braided, and her blue eyes so full of sun¬ 
shine—who can look better than Else? And I can see 1 
am not the only one in Eisenach who thinks so. I would 
only wish to make all the days holidays for her, and that it 
should not be necessary when the festival is over for my 
little sister to lay aside all her finery so carefully in the 
great chest, and prut on her Aschputtel garments again, so 
that if the fairy prince we used to talk of were to come, he 
would scarcely recognize the fair little princess he had seen 
at church. And yet no fairy prince need be ashamed of 
our Else, even in her working, everyday clothes; he cer¬ 
tainly would not be the right one if he were. In the twi¬ 
light, when the day’s work is done, and the children are 
asleep, and she comes and sits beside me with her knitting 
in the lumber-room or under the pear tree in the garden, 
what princess could look fresher or neater than Else, with 
her smooth fair hair braided like a coronet? Who would 
think that she had been toiling all day, cooking, washing, 
nursing the children? Except, indeed, because of the 
healthy color her active life gives her face, and for that 
sweet low voice of hers, which I think women learn best by 
the cradles of little children. 

I suppose it is because I have never yet seen any maiden 
to be compared to our Else that I have not yet fallen in 


26 


THE SGHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


love. And, nevertheless, it is not of such a face as Else’s 
I dream, when dreams come, or even exactly such as my 
mother’s. My mother’s eyes are dimmed with many cares? 
is it not that very worn and faded brow that makes her 
sacred to me? More sacred than any saintly halo! And 
Else, good, practical little Else, she is a dear household 
fairy; but the face I dream of has another look in it. 
Else’s eyes are good, as she says, for seeing and helping; 
and sweet, indeed, they are for loving—dear, kind, true 
eyes. But the eyes I dream of have another look, a fire 
like our grandmother’s, as if from a southern sun; dim, 
dreamy, far-seeing glances, burning into hearts, like the 
ladies in the romances, and yet piercing into heaven, like 
St. Cecilia’s when she stands entranced by her organ. She 
should be a saint, at whose feet I might sit and look through 
her pure heart into heaven, and yet she should love me 
wholly, passionately, fearlessly, devotedly, as if her heaven 
were all in my love. My love! and who am I that I should 
have such dreams? A poor burgher lad of Eisenach, a 
penniless student of a week’s standing at Erfurt! The 
eldest son of a large, destitute family, who must not dare to 
think of loving the most perfect maiden in the world, when 
I meet her, until I have rescued a father, mother, and six 
brothers and sisters from the jaws of biting poverty. And 
even in a dream it seems almost a treachery to put any poor 
creature above Else. I fancy I see her kind blue eyes fill¬ 
ing with reproachful tears. For there is no doubt that in 
Else’s heart I have no rival, even in a dream. Poor, lov¬ 
ing, little Else! 

Yes, she must be rescued from the pressure of those 
daily fretting cares of penury and hope deferred, which 
have made our mother old so early. If I had been in the 
father’s place, I could never have borne to see winter creep¬ 
ing so soon over the summer of her life. But he does not 
see it. Or if for a moment her pale face and the gray hairs 
which begin to come seem to trouble him, he kisses her 
forehead, and says: 

“But, mother, it will soon be over; there is nothing 
wanting now but the last link to make this last invention 
perfect, and then-” 

And then he goes into his printing-room; but to this 
day the missing link has never been found. Else and our 
mother, however, always believe it will turn up some day. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


27 


Our grandmother has doubts. And I have scarcely any 
hope at all, although, for all the world, I would not breathe 
this to any one at home. To me that laboratory of my 
father’s, with its furnace, its models, its strange machines, 
is the most melancholy place in the world. It is like a 
haunted chamber—haunted with the helpless, nameless 
ghosts of infants that have died at their birth—the ghosts 
of vain and fruitless projects; like the ruins of a city that 
some earthquake had destroyed before it was finished, 
ruined palaces that were never roofed, ruined houses that 
were never inhabited, ruined churches that were never 
worshiped in. The saints forbid that my life should be 
like that! and yet what it is which has made him so 
unsuccessful, I can never exactly make out. He is no 
dreamer. He is no idler. He does not sit lazily down with 
folded arms and imagine his projects. He makes his cal¬ 
culations with the most laborious accuracy; he consults all 
the learned men and books he has access to. He weighs, 
and measures, and constructs the neatest models possible. 
His room is a museum of exquisite models, which seem as 
if they must answer, and yet never do. The professors, 
and even the elector’s secretary, who has come more than 
once to consult him, have told me he is a man of remark¬ 
able genius. 

What can it be, then, that makes his life such a failure? 
I cannot think; unless it is that other great inventors and 
discoverers seem to have made their discoveries and inven¬ 
tions as it were by the way , in the course of their everyday 
life. As a seaman sails on his appointed voyage to some 
definite port, he notices driftwood or weeds which must 
have come from unknown lands beyond the seas. As he 
sails in his calling from port to port, the thought is always 
in his mind; everything he hears groups itself naturally 
around this thought; he observes the winds and currents; 
he collects information from mariners who have been 
driven out of their course, in the direction where he believes 
this unknown land to lie. And at length he persuades 
some prince that his belief is no mere dream, and like the 
great admiral, Christopher Columbus, he ventures across 
the trackless, unknown Atlantic and discovers the Western 
Indies. But before he was a discoverer he was a mariner.. 

Or some engraver of wood-cuts thinks of applying his 
carved blocks to letters, and the printing-press is invented. 


28 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


But it is in his calling. He has not gone out of his way to 
hunt for inventions. He has found them in his path, the 
path of his daily calling. It seems to me people do not be¬ 
come great, do not become discoverers and inventors by 
trying to be so, but by determining to do in the very best 
way what they have to do. Thus improvements suggest 
themselves, one by one, step by step; each improvement is 
tested as it is made by practical use, until at length the 
happy thought comes, not like an elf from the wild forests, 
but like an angel on the daily path; and the little improve¬ 
ments become the great invention. There is another great 
advantage, moreover, in this method over our father’s. 
If the invention never comes, at all events we have the im¬ 
provements, which are worth something. Every one can¬ 
not invent the printing-press or discover the New Indies; 
but every engraver may make his engravings a little better, 
and every mariner may explore a little further than his 
predecessors. 

Yet it seems almost like treason to write thus of our 
father. What would Else or our mother think, who be¬ 
lieve there is nothing but accident or the blindness of man¬ 
kind between us and greatness? Not that they have 
learned to think thus from our father. Never in my life 
did I hear him say a grudging or depreciating word of any 
of those who have most succeeded where he has failed. He 
seems to look on all such men as part of a great brother¬ 
hood, and to rejoice in another man hitting the point which 
he missed, just as he would rejoice in himself succeeding in 
something to-day which he failed in yesterday. It is this 
nobleness of character which makes me reverence him more 
than any mere successes could. It is because I fear, that 
in a life of such disappointment my character would not 
prove so generous, but that failure would sour my temper 
and penury degrade my spirit as they never have his, that 
I have ventured to search for the rocks on which he made 
shipwreck, in order to avoid them. All men cannot return 
wrecked, and tattered, and destitute from an unsuccessful 
voyage, with a heart as hopeful, a temper as generous, a 
spirit as free from envy and detraction, as if they brought 
the golden fleece with them. Our father does this again 
and again; and therefore I trust his argosies are laid up for 
him as for those who follow the rules of evangelical perfec¬ 
tion, where neither moth nor rust can corrupt. I could 


THE SCHONBEKG-COTTA FAMILY. 


29 


not. I would never return until I could bring what I had 
sought, or I should return a miserable man, shipwrecked in 
heart as well as in fortune. And therefore I must examine 
my charts, and choose my port and my vessel carefully, 
before I sail. 

All these thoughts came into my mind as I stood on the 
last height of the forest, from which I could look back on 
Eisenach, nestling in the valley under the shadow of the 
Wartburg. May the dear mother of God, St. Elizabeth, 
and all the saints, defend it evermore! 

But there was not much time to linger for a last view of 
Eisenach. The winter days were short; some snow had 
fallen in the previous night. The roofs of the houses in 
Eisenach were white with it, and the carving of spire and 
tower seemed inlaid with alabaster. A thin covering lay on 
the meadows and hillsides, and light feather-work frosted 
the pines. I had nearly thirty miles to walk through for¬ 
est and plain before I reached Erfurt. The day was as 
bright and the air as light as my heart. The shadows of 
the pines lay across the frozen snow, over which my feet 
crunched cheerily. In the clearings, the outlines of the 
black twigs were penciled dark and clear against the light 
blue of the winter sky. Every outline was clear, and crisp, 
and definite, as I resolved my own aims in life should be. 
I knew my purposes were pure and high, and I felt as if 
Heaven must prosper me. 

But as the day wore on, I began to wonder when the 
forest would end, until, as the sun sank lower and lower, I 
feared I must have missed my way; and at last, as I 
climbed a height to make a survey, to my dismay it was too 
evident I had taken the wrong turning in the snow. Wide 
reaches of the forest lay all around me, one pine-covered 
hill folding over another; and only in one distant opening 
could I get a glimpse of the level land beyond, where I 
knew Erfurt must lie. The daylight was fast departing; 
my wallet was empty. I knew there were villages hidden 
in the valleys here and there; but not a wreath of smoke 
could I see, nor any sign of man, except here and there 
faggots piled in some recent clearing. Toward one of these 
clearings I directed my steps, intending to follow the wood¬ 
cutter’s track, which I thought would probably lead me to 
the hut of some charcoal burner, where I might find fire 
and shelter. Before I reached this spot, however, night 


30 


THE 8CH0NB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


had set in. The snow began to fall again, and it seemed 
too great a risk to leave the broader path to follow any un¬ 
known track. I resolved, therefore, to make the best of 
my circumstances. They were not unendurable. I had 
a flint and tinder, and gathering some dry wood and twigs, 
I contrived with some difficulty to light a fire. Cold and 
hungry I certainly was, but for this I cared little. It was 
only an extra fast, and it seemed to me quite natural that 
my journey of life should commence with difficulty and 
danger. It was always so in legends of the saints, romance, 
or elfin tale, or when anything great was to be done. 

But in the night, as the wind howled through the count¬ 
less stems of the pines, not with the soft varieties of sound 
it makes amid the summer oak woods, but with a long, 
monotonous wail like a dirge, a tumult awoke in my heart 
such as I had never known before. I knew these forests 
were infested by robber-bands, and I could hear in the. dis¬ 
tance the baying and howling of the wolves; but it was not 
fear which tossed my thoughts so wildly to and fro, at least 
not fear of bodily harm. I thought of all the stories of 
wild huntsmen, of wretched, guilty men, hunted by packs 
of fiends; and the stories which had excited a wild delight 
in Else and me, as our grandmother told them by the fire 
at home, now seemed to freeze my soul with horror. For 
was not I a guilty creature, and were not the devils indeed 
too really around me? and what was to prevent their 
possessing me? Who in all the universe was on my side? 
Could I look up with confidence to God? He loves only 
the holy. Or to Christ? He is the Judge; and more terri¬ 
ble than any cries of legions of devils will it be to the sinner 
to hear his voice from the awful snow-white throne of judg¬ 
ment. Then my sins rose before me—my neglected 
prayers, penances imperfectly performed, incomplete con¬ 
fessions. Even that morning, had I not been full of proud 
and ambitious thoughts—even, perhaps, vainly comparing 
myself with my good father, and picturing myself as con¬ 
quering and enjoying all kinds of worldly delights? It 
was true, it could hardly be a sin to wish to save my family 
from penury and care; but it was certainly a sin to be am¬ 
bitious of worldly distinction, as Father Christopher had 
so often told me. Then, how difficult to separate the two! 
Where did duty end, and ambition and pride begin? I 
determined to find a confessor as soon as I reached Erfurt, 


THE SCHONBEKG-COTTA FAMILY. 


31 


if ever I reached it. And yet, what could even the wisest 
confessor do for ine in such difficulties? How could I ever 
he sure that I had not deceived myself in examining my 
motives, and then deceived him, and thus obtained an 
absolution on false pretenses, which could avail me nothing? 
And if this might be so with future confessions, why not 
with all past ones? 

The thought was horror to me, and seemed to open a 
fathomless abyss of misery yawning under my feet. I 
could no more discover a track out of my miserable per¬ 
plexities than out of the forest. 

For if these apprehensions had any ground, not only the 
sins I had failed to confess were unpardoned, but the sins 
I had confessed and obtained absolution for on false grounds. 
Thus it might be at that moment my soul stood utterly 
unsheltered, as my body from the snows, exposed to the 
wrath of God, the judgment of Christ, and the exulting 
cruelty of devils. 

It seemed as if only one thing could save me, and that 
could never be had. If I could find an infallible confessor 
who could see down into the depths of my heart, and back 
into every recess of my life, who could unveil me to myself, 
penetrate all my motives, and assign me the penances I 
really deserved, I would travel to the end of the world to 
find him. 

The severest penances he could assign, after searching 
the lives of all the holy eremites and martyrs, for examples 
of mortification, it seemed to me would be light indeed, if 
I could only be sure they were the right penances, and 
Would be followed by a true absolution. 

But this it was, indeed, impossible I could ever find. 

What sure hope then could I ever have of pardon or re¬ 
mission of sins? What voice of priest or monk, the holiest 
on earth, could ever assure me I had been honest with my¬ 
self? What absolution could ever give me a right to believe 
that the baptismal robes, soiled, as they told me, “before I 
had left off my infant socks,” could once more be made 
white and clean? 

Then for the first time in my life the thought flashed on 
me, of the monastic vows, the cloister and the cowl. I 
knew there was a virtue in the monastic profession which 
many said was equal to a second baptism. Could it be pos¬ 
sible that the end of all my aspirations might after all be 


32 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


the monk’s frock? What then would become of father 
and mother, dear Else, and the little ones? The thought 
of their dear faces seemed for an instant to drive away these 
gloomy fears, as they say a hearth-fire keeps off the wolves. 
But then a hollow voice seemed to whisper, “If God is 
against you, and the saints, and your conscience, what help 
can you render your family or any one else?” The conflict 
seemed more than I could bear. It was so impossible to me 
to make out which suggestions were from the devil and 
which from God, and which from my own sinful heart; 
and yet it might be the unpardonable sin to confound 
them. Wherefore for the rest of the night I tried not to 
think at all, but paced up and down reciting the ten com¬ 
mandments, the creed, the paternoster, the ave Maria, the 
litanies of the saints, and all the collects and holy ejacula¬ 
tions I could think of. By degrees this seemed to calm me, 
especially the creed and the paternoster, whether because 
these are spells the fiends especially dread, or because there 
is something so comforting in the mere words, “Our 
father,” and “the remissions of sins,” I do not know. 
Probably for both reasons. 

And so the morning dawned, and the low sunbeams 
slanted up through the red stems of the pines; and I said 
the ave Maria, and thought of the sweet mother of God, 
and was a little cheered. 

But all the next day I could not recover from the terrors 
of that solitary night. A shadow seemed to have fallen on 
my hopes and projects. How could I tell that all which 
had seemed most holy to me as an object in life might not 
be temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and 
that with all my laboring for my dear ones at home, my 
sins might not bring on them more troubles than all my 
successes could avert? 

As I left the shadow of the forest, however, my heart 
seemed to grow lighter. I shall always henceforth feel 
sure that the wildest legends of the forest may be true, and 
that the fiends have especial haunts among the solitary 
woods at night. 

It was pleasant to see the towers of Erfurt rising before 
me on the plain. 

I had only one friend at the university; but that is 
Martin Luther, and he is a host in himself to me. He is 
already distinguished among the students here; and the 
professors expect great things of him. 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


S3 


He is especially studying jurisprudence, because his 
farther wishes him to be a great lawyer. This also is to be 
my profession, and his counsel, always so heartily given, is 
of the greatest use to me. 

His life is, indeed, changed since we first knew him at 
Eisenach, when Aunt Ursula took compassion on him, a 
destitute scholar, singing at the doors of the houses in St. 
George street for a piece of bread. His father’s hard 
struggles to maintain and raise his family have succeeded 
at last; he is now the owner of a foundry and some smelt¬ 
ing furnaces, and supports Martin liberally at the univer¬ 
sity. The icy morning of Martin’s struggles seems over, 
and all is bright before him. 

Erfurt is the first university in Germany. Compared 
with it, as Martin Luther says, the other universities are 
mere private academies. At present we have from a thou¬ 
sand to thirteen hundred students. Some of our professors 
have studied the classics in Italy, under the descendants of 
the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Elector Frederic 
has, indeed, lately founded a new university at Witten¬ 
berg, but we at Erfurt have little fear of Wittenberg out¬ 
stripping our ancient institution. 

The humanists, or disciples of the ancient heathen 
learning, are in great force here, with Mutianus Rufus at 
their head. They meet often, especially at his house, and 
he gives them subjects for Latin versification, such as the 
praises of poverty. Martin Luther’s friend Spalatin joined 
these assemblies; but he himself does not, at least not as a 
member. Indeed, strange things are reported of their 
converse, which make the names of poet and philosopher 
in which they delight very much suspected in orthodox 
circles. These ideas Mutianus and his friends are said to 
have imported with the classical literature from Italy. He 
has even declared and written in a letter to a friend, that 
“there is but one God, and one goddess, although under 
various forms and various names, as Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, 
Moses, Christ; Luna, Ceres, Proserpine, Tellus, Mary.” 
But these things he warns his disciples not to speak of in 
public. “They must be veiled in silence,” he says, “like 
the Eleusinian mysteries. In the affairs of religion we 
must make use of the mask of fables and engimas. Let us 
by the grace of Jupiter, that is, of the best and highest 
God, despise the lesser gods. When I say Jupiter, I mean 
Christ and the true God.” 


34 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


Mutianus and his friends also in their intimate circles 
speak most slightingly of the church ceremonies, calling 
the mass a comedy, and the holy relics ravens’ bones;* 
speaking of the service of the altar as so much lost time; 
and stigmatizing the prayers at the canonical hours as a 
mere baying of hounds, or the humming, not of busy bees, 
but of lazy drones. 

If you reproached them with such irreverent sayings, 
they would probably reply that they had only uttered them 
in an esoteric sense, and meant nothing by them. But 
when people deem it right thus to mask their truths, and 
explain away their errors, it is difficult to distinguish which 
is the mask and which the reality in their estimation. It 
seems to me also that they make mere intellectual games or 
exercises out of the most profound and awful questions. 

This, probably, more than the daring character of their 
speculations, deters Martin Luther from numbering him¬ 
self among them. His nature is so reverent in spite of all 
the courage of his character. I think he would dare or 
suffer anything for what he believed true; but he cannot 
bear to have the poorest fragment of what he holds sacred 
trifled with or played with as a mere feat of intellectual 
gymnastics. 

His chief attention is at present directed, by his father’s 
especial desire, to Roman literature and law, and to the 
study of the allegories and philosophy of Aristotle. He 
likes to have to do with what is true '<,nd solid: poetry and 
music are his delight and recreation. But it is in debate he 
most excels. A few evenings since, he introduced me to a 
society of students, where questions new and old are de¬ 
bated; and it was glorious to see how our Martin carried 
off the palm; sometimes swooping down on his opponents 
like an eagle among a flock of small birds, or setting down his 
great lion’s paw and quietly crushing a host of objections, 
apparently unaware of the mischief he had done, until some 
feeble wail of the prostrate foe made him sensible of it, and 
he withdrew with a good-humored apology for having hurt 
any one’s feelings. At other times he withers an unfair 
argument or a confused statement to a cinder by some 
lightning-flash of humor or satire. I do not think he Is 
often perplexed by seeing too much of the other side of a 


* That is, skeletons left on the gallows for the ravens to peck at. 




THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


35 


disputed question. He holds the one truth he is contend¬ 
ing for, and he sees the one point he is aiming at, and at 
that he charges with a force compounded of the ponderous 
weight of his will, and the electric velocity of his thoughts, 
crushing whatever comes in his way, scattering whatever 
escapes right and left, and never heeding how the scattered 
forces may reunite and form in his rear. He knows that 
if he only turns on them, in a moment they will disperse 
< again. 

I cannot quite tell how this style of warfare would an¬ 
swer for an advocate, who had to make the best of any 
cause he is engaged to plead. I cannot fancy Martin 
Luther quietly collecting the arguments from the worst 
side, to the end that even the worst side may have fair play; 
which is, I suppose, often the office of an advocate. 

No doubt, however, he will find or make his calling in 
the world. The professors and learned men have the 
most brilliant expectations as to his career. And what is 
rare (they say), he seems as much the favorite of the 
students as of the professors. His nature is so social; his 
musical abilities and his wonderful powers of conversation 
make him popular with all. 

And yet, underneath it all, we who know him well can 
detect at times that tide of thoughtful melancholy which 
seems to lie at the bottom of all hearts which have looked 
deeply into themselves or into life. 

He is as attentive as ever to religion, never missing the 
daily mass. But in our private conversations, I see that 
his conscience is anything but at ease. Has he passed 
through conflicts such as mine in the forest on that terrible 
night? Perhaps through conflicts as much fiercer and 
more terrible, as his character is stronger and his mind 
deeper than mine. But who can tell? What is the use of 
unfolding perplexities to each other, which it seems no in¬ 
tellect on earth can solve? The inmost recesses of the 
heart must always, I suppose, be a solitude, like that dark 
and awful sanctuary within the veil of the old Jewish 
temple, entered only once a year, and faintly illumined by 
the light without, through the thick folds of the sacred 
veil. 

If only that solitude were indeed a holy of holies—or, 
being what it is, if we only need enter it once a year, and 
not carry about the consciousness of this dark secret with 


36 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


us everywhere. But, alas! once entered we can never for¬ 
get it. It is like the chill, dark crypts underneath our 
churches, where the masses for the dead are celebrated, 
and where in some monastic churches the embalmed corpses 
lie shriveled to mummies, and visible through gratings. 
Through all the joyous festivals of the holidays above, the 
consciousness of those dark chambers of death below seems 
to creep up; like the damps of the vaults through the 
incense, like the muffled wail of the dirges through the 
songs of praise. 

Erfurt, April, 1503. 

We are just returned from an expedition which might 
have proved fatal to Martin Luther. Early in the morn¬ 
ing, three days since, we started to walk to Mansfeld on a 
visit to his family, our hearts as full of hope as the woods 
were full of song. We were armed with swords; our wal¬ 
lets were full; and spirits light as the air. Our way was to 
lie through field and forest, and then along the banks of 
the river Holme, through the golden meadow where are so 
many noble cloisters and imperial palaces. 

But we had scarcely been on our way an hour when Mar¬ 
tin, by some accident, ran his sword into his foot. To 
my dismay the blood gushed out in a stream. He had cut 
into a main artery. I left him under the care of some 
peasants, and ran back to Erfurt for a physician. When 
he arrived, however, there was great difficulty in closing 
the wound with bandages. I longed for Else or our 
mother’s skillful fingers. We contrived to carry him back 
to the city. I sat up to watch with him. But in the mid¬ 
dle of the night his wound burst out bleeding afresh. The 
danger was very great, and Martin himself giving up hope, 
and believing death was close at hand, committed his soul 
to the blessed mother of God. Merciful and pitiful, know¬ 
ing sorrow, yet raised glorious above all sorrow, with a 
mother’s heart for all, and a mother’s claim on Him who 
is the judge of all, where indeed can we so safely flee for 
refuge as to Mary? It was edifying to see Martin’s devo¬ 
tion to her, and no doubt it was greatly owing to this that 
at length the remedies succeeded, the bandages closed the 
wound again, and the blood was stanched. 

Many an ave will I say for this to the sweet mother of 
mercy. Perchance she may also have pity on me. Oh, 
sweetest lady, “ eternal daughter of the eternal father, heart 


THE SCHOHB ERG-COTTA FAMIL T. 37 

of the indivisible trinity,” thou seest my desire to help my 
own care-worn mother; aid me, and have mercy on me, 
thy sinful child. 

Erfurt, June, 1503. 

Martin Luther has taken his first degree. He is a 
fervent student, earnest in this as in everything. Cicero 
and Virgil are his great companions among the Latins. He 
is no raised quite above the pressing cares of penury, and 
will probably never taste them more. His father is now a 
prosperous burgher of Mansfeld, and on the way to become 
burgomaster. I wish the prospects at my home were as 
cheering. A few years less of pinching poverty for myself 
seems to matter little, but the cares of our mother and 
Else weigh on me often heavily. It must be long yet be¬ 
fore I can help them effectually, and meantime the bright 
youth of my little Else, and the very life of our toil-worn 
patient mother will be wearing away. 

For myself I can fully enter into what Martin says, “The 
young should learn especially to endure suffering and 
want; for such suffering doth them no harm. It doth more 
harm for one to prosper without toil than it doth to endure 
suffering.” He says also, “It is God’s way, of beggars to 
make men of power, just as he made the world out of 
nothing. Look upon the courts of kings and princes, upon 
cities and parishes. You will there find jurists, doctors, 
councillors, secretaries, and preachers who were commouly 
poor, and always such as have been students, and have 
risen and flown so high through the quill that they are 
become lords.” 

But the way to wealth through the quill seems long; and 
lives so precious to me are being worn out meantime, while 
I climb to the point where I could help them! Some¬ 
times I wish I had chosen the calling of a merchant, men 
seem to prosper so much more rapidly through trade than 
through study; and nothing on earth seems to me so well 
worth working for as to lift the load from their hearts at 
home. But it is too late. Rolling stones gather no moss. 
I must go on now in the track I have chosen. Only some¬ 
times again the fear which came over me on that night in 
the forest. It seems as if heaven were against me, and that 
it is vain presumption for such as I even to hope to benefit 
any one. 

Partly, no doubt, it is to the depression caused by poor 


38 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


living, which brings these thoughts. Martin Lntner said 
so to me one day when he found me desponding. He said 
he knew so well what it was. He had suffered so much 
from penury at Magdeburg, and at Eisenach had even seri¬ 
ously thought of giving up study altogether and returning 
to his father’s calling. He is kind to me and to all who 
need, but his means do not yet allow him to do more than 
maintain himself. Or rather, they are not his but his 
father’s, and he feels he has no right to be generous at the 
expense of his father’s self-denial and toil. 

I find life look different, I must say, after a good meal. 
But then I cannot get rid of the thought of the few such 
meals they have at home. Not that Else writes gloomily. 
She never mentions a thing to sadden me. And this week 
she sent me a gulden, which she said belonged to her alone, 
and she had vowed never to use unless I would take it. 
But a student who saw them lately said our mother looked 
wan and ill. And to increase their difficulties, a month 
since the father received into the house a little orphan girl, 
a cousin of our mother’s, called Eva von Schonberg. 
Heaven forbid that I should grudge the orphan her crust, 
hut when it makes a crust less for the mother and the little 
ones, it is difficult to rejoice in such an act of charity. 

Erfurt, July, 1503. 

I have just obtained a nomination on a foundation, 
which will, I hope, for the present at least, prevent my 
being any burden on my family lor my own maintenance. 
The rules are very strict, and they are enforced with many 
awful vows and oaths which trouble my conscience not a 
little, because, if the least detail of these rules to which I 
have sworn is even inadvertently omitted, I involve myself 
in the guilt of perjury. However, it is a step onward in 
the way to independence; and a far heavier yoke might 
well be borne with such an object. 

We (the beneficiaries on this foundation) have solemnly 
vowed to observe the seven canonical hours, never omitting 
the prayers belonging to each. This ensures early rising, 
which is a good thing for a student. The most difficult to 
keep is the midnight hour, after a day of hard study; but 
it is no more than soldiers on duty have continually to go 
through. We have also to chant the Miserere at funerals, 
and frequently to hear the eulogy of the Blessed Virgin 


THE SCHONBERG-C0TTA FAMILY. 


39 


Mary. This last can certainly not be called a hardship, 
least of all to me who desire ever henceforth to have an 
especial devotion to Our Lady, to recite daily the rosary, 
commemorating the joys of Mary, the salutation, the jour¬ 
ney across the mountains, the birth without pain, the find¬ 
ing of Jesus in the temple, and the ascension. It is only 
the vows which make it rather a bondage. But, indeed, 
in spite of all, it is a great boon. I can conscientiously 
write to Else now that I shall not need another penny of 
their scanty store, and can even by the next opportunity 
return what she sent, which, happily, I have not yet 
touched. 


August, 1503. 

Martin Luther is very dangerously ill; many of the pro¬ 
fessors and students are in great anxiety about him. He 
has so many friends; and no wonder! He is no cold friend 
himself, and all expect great honor to the University from 
his abilities. I scarcely dare to think what his loss would 
be to me. But this morning an aged priest who visited 
him inspired us with some hope. As Martin lay, appar¬ 
ently in the last extremity, and himself expecting death, 
this old priest came to his bedside, and said gently but in a 
firm tone of conviction: 

“Be of good comfort, my brother, you will not die at 
this time; God will yet make a great man of you, who 
shall comfort many others. Whom God loveth and pro- 
poseth to make a blessing, upon him he early layeth the 
cross, and in that school, who patiently endure learn much.” 

The words came with a strange kind of power, and I 
cannot help thinking that there is a little improvement in 
the patient since they were uttered. Truly, good words 
are like food and medicine to body and soul. 

Erfurt, August, 1503. 

Martin Luther is recovered! The Almighty, the blessed 
mother, and all the saints be praised. 

The good old priest’s words have also brought some 
especial comfort to me. If it could only be possible that 
those troubles and cares which have weighed so heavily on 
Else’s early life and mine, are not the rod of anger, but the 
cross laid on those God loveth! But who can tell? For 
Else, at least, I will try to believe this. 


40 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


The world is wide in those days, with the great New 
World opened by the Spanish mariners beyond the Atlantic, 
and the noble Old World opened to students through the 
sacred fountains of the ancient classics, once more unsealed 
by the revived study of the ancient languages; and this 
new discovery of printing, which will, my father thinks, 
diffuse the newly unsealed fountains of ancient wisdom in 
countless channels among high and low. 

These are glorious times to live in. So much already 
unfolded to us! And who knows what beyond? For it 
seems as if the hearts of men everywhere were beating high 
with expectation; as if, in these days, nothing were too 
great to anticipate, or too good to believe. 

It is well to encounter our dragons at the threshold of 
life, instead of at the end of the race—at the threshold of 
death; therefore, I may well be content. In this wide and 
ever widening world, there must be some career for me and 
mine. What will it be? 

And what will Martin Luther’s be? Much is expected 
from him. Famous every one at the university says he 
must be. On what field will he win his laurels? Will they 
be laurels or palms? 

When I hear him in the debates of the students, all wait¬ 
ing for his opinions, and applauding his eloquent words, I 
see the laurel already among his black hair, wreathing his 
massive, homely forehead. But when I remember the de¬ 
bate which I know there is within him, the anxious fer¬ 
vency of his devotions, his struggle of conscience, his 
distress at any omission of duty, and watch the deep, melan¬ 
choly look which there is sometimes in his dark eyes, I 
think not of the tales of the heroes, but of the leg-ends of 
the saints, and wonder in what victory over the old dragon 
he will win his palm. 

But the bells are sounding for compline, and I must not 
miss the sacred hour. 


tee schonberg-cotta family. 


41 


PART III. 

else’s chronicle. 

Eisenach, 1504. 

I cannot say that things have prospered much with us 
since Fritz left. The lumber-room itself is changed. The 
piles of old books are much reduced, because we have been 
obliged to pawn many of them for food. Some even of the 
father’s beautiful models have had to be sold. It went ter¬ 
ribly to his heart. But it paid our debts. 

Our grandmother has grown a little querulous at times 
lately. And I am so tempted to he cross sometimes. The 
boys eat so much, and wear out their clothes so fast. In¬ 
deed, I cannot see that poverty makes any of us any 
better, except it be my mother, who needed improvement 
least of all. 


September, 1504. 

The father has actually brought a new inmate into the 
house, a little girl, called Eva von Schonberg, a distant 
cousin of our mother. 

Last week he told us she was coming, very abruptly. I 
think he was rather afraid of what our grandmother would 
say, for we all know it is not of the least use to come 
round her with soft speeches. She always sees what you 
are aiming at, and with her keen eyes cuts straight through 
all your circumlocutions, and obliges you to descend 
direct on your point, with more rapidity than grace. 

Accordingly, he said, quite suddenly, one day at dinner: 

“I forgot to tell you, little mother, I have just had a 
letter from your relations in Bohemia. Your great-uncle 
is dead. His son, you know, died before him. A little 
orphan girl is left with no one to take care of her. I have 
desired them to send her to us. I could do no less. It 
was an act, not of charity, but of the plainest duty. And 
besides,” he added, apologetically, “in the end it may make 
our fortunes. There is property somewhere in the family, 
if we could get it; and this little Eva is the descendant of 
the eldest branch. Indeed, I do not know but that she 
may bring many valuable family heirlooms with her.” 

These last observations he addressed especially to my 
grandmother, hoping thereby to make it clear to her that 


42 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


the act was one of the deepest worldly wisdom. Then 
turning to the mother, he concluded: 

“Little mother, thou wilt find a place for the orphan in 
thy heart, and Heaven will no doubt bless us for it.” 

“Ho doubt about the room in my daughter’s heart!” 
murmured our grandmother; “the question, as I read it, 
is not about hearts, but about larders and wardrobes. And, 
certainly,” she added, not very pleasantly, “there is room 
enough there for any family jewels the young heiress may 
bring.” 

As usual, the mother came to the rescue. 

“Dear grandmother,” she said, “heaven, no doubt, will 
repay us; and besides, you know, we may now venture on 
a little more expense, since we are out of debt.” 

“There is no doubt, I suppose,” retorted our grand¬ 
mother, “about heaven repaying you; but there seems to 
me a good deal of doubt whether it will be in current coin.” 

Then, I suppose fearing the effect of so doubtful a senti¬ 
ment on the children, she added rather querulously, but in 
a gentler tone: 

“ Let the little creature come. Room may be made for 
her soon in one way or another. The old creep out at the 
churchyard gate, while the young bound in at the front¬ 
door.” 

And in a few days little Eva came; but, unfortunately, 
without the family jewels. But the saints forbid I should 
grow mercenary or miserly, and grudge the orphan her 
crust! 

And who could help welcoming little Eva? As she lies 
on my bed asleep, with her golden hair on the pillow, and 
the long lashes shading her cheeks, flushed with sleep and 
resting on her dimpled white hands, who could wish her 
away? And when I put out the lamp (as I must very 
soon) and lie down beside her, she will half awake, just to 
nestle into my heart, and murmur in her sleep, “Sweet 
Cousin Else!” And I shall no more be able to wish her 
gone than my guardian angel. Indeed I think she is 
something like one. 

She is not quite ten years old; but being an only child, 
and always brought up with older people, she has a quiet, 
considerate way, and a quaint, thoughtful gravity, which 
sits with a strange charm on her bright, innocent, childlike 
face. 


THE SGEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


43 


At first she seemed a little afraid of our children, es¬ 
pecially the boys, and crept about everywhere by the side 
of my mother, to whom she gave her confidence from the 
beginning. She did not so immediately take to our grand¬ 
mother, who was not very warm in her reception; but the 
second evening after her arrival, she deliberately took her 
little stool up to our grandmother’s side, and seating her¬ 
self at her feet, laid her two little, soft hands on the dear, 
thin, old hands, and said: 

“You must love me, for I shall love you very much. 
You are like my great-aunt who died.” 

And, strange to say, our grandmother seemed quite flat¬ 
tered ; and ever since they have been close friends. Indeed 
she commands us all, and there is not one in the house who 
does not seem to think her notice a favor. I wonder if 
Fritz would feel the same! 

Our father lets her sit in his printing-room when he is 
making experiments, which none of us ever dared to do. 
She perches herself on the window-sill, and watches him as 
if she understood it all, and he talks to her as if he thought 
she did. 

Then she has a wonderful way of telling the legends of 
the saints to the children. When our grandmother tells 
them, I think of the saints as heroes and warriors. When 
I try to relate the sacred stories to the little ones, I am 
afraid I make them too much like fairy tales. But when 
little Eva is speaking about St. Agnes or St. Catherine, 
her voice becomes soft and deep, like church music; and 
her face grave and beautiful, like one of the child angels 
in the pictures; and her eyes as if they saw into heaven. I 
wish Fritz could hear her. I think she must be just what 
the saints were when they were little children, except for 
that strange, quiet way she has of making every one do 
what she likes. If our St. Elizabeth had resembled our 
little Eva in that, I scarcely think the landgravine- 
mother would have ventured to have been so cruel to her. 
Perhaps it is little Eva who is to be the saint among us; 
and by helping her we may best please God, and be admit¬ 
ted at last to some humble place in heaven. 

Eisenach, December. 

It is a great comfort that Fritz writes in such good 
spirits. He seems full of hope as to his prospects, and 


44 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


already he has obtained a place in some excellent institu* 
tion, where, he says, he lives like a cardinal, and is quit© 
above wanting assistance from any one. This is very en¬ 
couraging. Martin Luther, also, is on the way to be quite 
a great man, Fritz says. It is difficult to imagine this; he 
looked so much like any one else, and we are all so com¬ 
pletely at home with him, and he talks in such a simple, 
familiar way to us all—not in learned words, or about diffi¬ 
cult, abstruse subjects, like the other wise men I know. 
Certainly it always interests us all to hear him, but one can 
understand all he says—even I can; so that it is not easy 
to think of him as a philosopher and a great man. I sup¬ 
pose wise men must be like the saints: one can only see 
what they are when they are some distance from us. 

What kind of great man will Martin Luther be, I won¬ 
der? As great as our burgomaster, or as Master Trebo- 
nius? Perhaps even greater than these; as great, even, as 
the elector’s secretary, who came to see our father about 
his inventions. But it is a great comfort to think of it, 
especially on Fritz’s account; for I am sure Martin will 
never forget old friends. 

I cannot quite comprehend Eva’s religion. It seems to 
make her happy. I do not think she is afraid of God, or 
even of confession. She seems to enjoy going to church as 
if it were a holiday in the woods; and the name of Jesus 
seems not terrible, but dear, to her, as the name of the 
sweet mother of God is to me. This is very difficult to 
understand. I think she is not even very much afraid of 
the judgment day; and this is the reason why I think so: 
The other night when we were both awakened by an awful 
thunder-storm, I hid my face under the clothes, in order 
not to see the flashes, until I heard the children crying in 
the next room, and rose, of course, to soothe them, because 
our mother had been very tired that day, and was, I 
trusted, asleep. When I had sung and talked to the little 
ones, and sat by them till they were asleep, I returned to 
our room, trembling in every limb; but I found Eva kneel¬ 
ing by the bedside, with her crucifix pressed to her bosom, 
looking as calm and happy as if the lightning flashes had 
been morning sunbeams. 

She rose from her knees when I entered; and when I 
was once more safely in bed, with my arm around her, and 
the storm had lulled a little, I said; 


I HE SCHONBETtO-COTTA FAMILY. 


45 


*Fva, are yon not afraid of the lightning?” 

•‘I think it might hurt us, Cousin Else,” she said, “and 
that was the reason I was praying to God.” 

“But, Eva,” I said, “supposing the thunder should be 
the archangel’s voice? I always think every thunder-storm 
may be the beginning of the day of wrath—the dreadful 
judgment day. What should you do then?” 

She was silent a little, and then she said: 

“I think I should take my crucifix and pray, and try to 
ask the Lord Christ to remember that he died on the cross 
for us once. I think he would take pity on us if we did. 
Besides, Cousin Else,” she added, after a pause, I have a 
sentence which always comforts me. My father taught it 
me when I was a very little girl, in the prison, before he 
died. I could not remember it all, but this part I have 
never forgotten: ‘ God so loved the world , that he gave his 
only son.' There was more, which I forgot; but that bit 
I always remembered, because I was my father’s only 
child, and he loved me so dearly. I do not quite know all 
it means; but I know they are God’s words, and I feel sure 
it means that God loves us very much, and that he is in 
some way like my father.” 

“I know,” I replied, “the creed says, ‘God the Father 
Almighty;’ but I never thought that the Almighty Father 
meant anything like our own father. I thought it meant 
only that he is very great, and that we all belong to him, 
and that we ought to love him. Are you sure, Eva, it 
means he loves us?" 

“I believe so, Cousin Else,” said Eva. 

“Perhaps it does mean that he loves you, Eva,” I an¬ 
swered. “ But you are a good child, and always have been, 
I should think; and we all know that God loves people 
who are good. That sentence says nothing, you see, about 
God loving people who are not good. It is because I am 
never sure that I am doing the things that please him, that 
I am afraid of God and of the judgment day.” 

Eva was silent a minute, and then she said: 

“ I wish I could remember the rest of the sentence. Per¬ 
haps it might tell.” 

“ Where does that sentence come from, Eva?” I asked. 
“Perhaps we might find it. Do you think God said it to 
your father from heaven, in a vision or a dream, as he 
speaks to the saints?” 


46 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“I think not, Cousin Else,” she replied thoughtfully; 
“because my father said it was in a book, which he told me 
where to find when he was gone. But when I found the 
book, a priest took it from me, and said it was not a good 
book for little girls; and I never had it again. So I have 
only my sentence, Cousin Else. I wish it made you happy, 
as it does me.” 

I kissed the darling child and wished her good-night; 
but I could not sleep. I wish I could see the book. But, 
perhaps, after all, it is not a right book; because (although 
Eva does not know it) I heard my grandmother say her 
father was a Hussite, and died on the scaffold for believing 
something wrong. 

In the morning Eva was awake before me. Her large 
dark eyes were watching me, and the moment I woke she 
said: 

“ Cousin Else, I think the end of that sentence has some¬ 
thing to do with the crucifix; because I always think of 
them together. You know the Lord Jesus Christ is God’s 
only Son, and he died on the cross for us.” 

And she rose and dressed, and said she would go to 
matins and say prayers for me, that I might not be afraid 
in the next thunder-storm. 

It must be true, I am sure, that the Cross and the blessed 
Passion were meant to do us some good; but then they can 
only do good to those who please God, and that is precisely 
what it is so exceedingly difficult to find out how to do. 

I cannot think, however, that Eva can in any way be 
believing wrong, because she is so religious and so good. 
She attends most regularly at the confessional, and is 
always at church at the early mass, and many times besides. 
Often, also, I find her at her devotions before the crucifix 
and the picture of the Holy Virgin and Child in our room. 
She seems really to enjoy being religious, as they say St. 
Elizabeth did. 

As for me, there is so very much to do between the 
printing, and the house, and our dear mother’s ill health, 
and the baby, and the boys, who tear their clothes in such 
incomprehensible ways, that I feel more and more how 
utterly hopeless it is for me ever to be like any of the saints 
—unless, indeed, it is St. Christopher, whose legend is 
often a comfort to me, as our grandmother used to tell it 
to us, which was in this way: 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


47 


Offerus was a soldier, a heathen, who lived in the land of 
Canaan. He had a body twelve ells long. He did not like 
to obey, but to command. He did not care what harm he 
did to others, but lived a very wild life, attacking and 
plundering all who came in his way. He only wished for 
one thing—to sell his services to the Mightiest; and as he 
heard that the emperor was in those days the head of 
Christendom, he said, “Lord Emperor, will you have 
me? To none less will I sell my heart’s blood.” 

The emperor looked at his Samson strength, his giant 
chest, and his mighty fists, and he said, “If thou wilt serve 
me forever, Offerus, I will allow it.” 

Immediately the giant answered, “To serve you forever 
is not so easily promised; but as long as I am your soldier, 
none in east or west shall trouble you.” 

Thereupon he went with the emperor through all the 
land, and the emperor was delighted with him. All the 
soldiers, in the combat as at the wine-cup, were miserable, 
helpless creatures compared with Offerus. 

Now the emperor had a harper who sang from morning 
till bedtime; and whenever the emperor was weary with 
the march this minstrel had to touch his harp-strings. 
Once, at eventide, they pitched the tents near a forest. 
The emperor ate and drank lustily; the minstrel sang a 
merry song. But as, in his song, he spoke of the evil one, 
the emperor signed the cross on his forehead. Said Offerus 
aloud to his comrades, “What is this? What jest is the 
prince making now?” Then the emperor said, “Offerus 
listen: I did it on account of the wicked fiend who is said 
often to haunt this forest with great rage and fury.” That 
seemed marvelous to Offerus, and he said, scornfully, to 
the emperor, “ I have a fancy for wild boars and deer. Let 
us hunt in this forest.” The emperor said softly, “ Offerus, 
no! Let alone the chase in this forest, for in filling thy 
larder thou mightest harm thy soul.” Then Offerus made 
a wry face and said, “The grapes are sour; if your high¬ 
ness is afraid of the devil, I will enter the service of this 
lord, who is mightier than you.” Thereupon he coolly de¬ 
manded his pay, took his departure, with no very ceremo¬ 
nious leave-taking, and strode off cheerily into the thickest 
depths of the forest. 

In a wild clearing of the forest he found the devil’s altar, 
built of black cinders; and on it, in the moonlight, gleamed 


48 


THE SCHOMB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


the white skeletons of men and horses. Offerus was in no 
way terrified, but quietly inspected the skulls and bones; 
then he called three times in a loud voice on the evil one, 
and seating himself fell asleep, and soon began to snore. 
When it was midnight, the earth seemed to crack, and on 
a coal-black horse he saw a pitch-black rider, who rode to 
him furiously, and sought to bind him with solemn prom¬ 
ises. But Offerus said, “We shall see.” Then they went 
together through the kingdoms of the world, and Offerus 
found him a better master than the emperor—needed seldom 
to polish his armor, but had plenty of feasting and fun. 
However, one day as they went along the highroad, three 
tall crosses stood before them. Then the Black Prince 
suddenly had a cold, and said, “Let us creep round by the 
byroad.” Said Offerus, “Methinks you are afraid of 
those gallowses,” and, drawing his bow, he shot an arrow 
into the middle cross. “What bad manners!” said Satan, 
softly; “do you not know that He who in his form as a 
servant is the son of Mary, now exercises great power?” 
“If that is the case,” said Offerus, “I came to you fettered 
by no promise; now I will seek further for the Mightiest, 
whom only I will serve.” Then Satan went off with a 
mocking laugh, and Offerus went on his way, asking every 
traveler he met for the Son of Mary. But, alas! few bare 
him in their hearts, and no one could tell the giant where 
the Lord dwelt, until one evening Offerus found an old 
pious hermit, who gave him a night’s lodging in his cell, 
and sent him the next morning to the Carthusian cloister. 
There the lord prior listened to Offerus, showed him plainly 
the path of faith, and told him he must fast and pray, as 
John the Baptist did of old in the wilderness. But he re¬ 
plied, “ Locusts and wild honey, my lord, are quite contrary 
to my nature, and I do not know any prayers. I should 
lose my strength altogether, and had rather not go to 
heaven at all than in that way.” “Beckless man!” said 
the prior. “However, you may try another way: give 
yourself up heartily to achieve some good work.” “Ah! 
let me hear,” said Offerus; “I have strength for that.” 
“ See, there flows a mighty river, which hinders pilgrims on 
their way to Rome. It has neither ford nor bridge. Carry 
the faithful over on thy back.” “If I can please the 
Saviour in that way, willingly will I carry the travelers to 
and fro,” replied the giant. And thereupon he built a hut 


THE SCHONBEBG-COTTA FAMILY. 49 

of reeds, and dwelt thenceforth among the water-rats and 
beavers on the borders of the river, carrying pilgrims over 
the river cheerfully, like a camel or an elephant. But if 
any one offered him ferry-money, he said, “ I labor for eter¬ 
nal life.” And when now, after many years, Offerus’ 
hair had grown white, one stormy night a plaintive little 
voice called to him, “Dear, good, tall Oiferus, carry me 
across.” Offerus was tired and sleepy, but he thought 
faithfully of Jesus Christ, and with weary arms seizing the 
pine trunk which was his staff when the floods swelled 
high, he waded through the water and nearly reached the 
opposite hank; but he saw no pilgrim there, so he thought, 
“I was dreaming,” and went back and lay down to sleep 
again. But scarcely had he fallen asleep when again came 
the little voice, this time very plaintive and touching, 
“Offerus, good, dear, great, tall Offerus, carry me across.” 
Patiently the old giant crossed the river again but neither 
man nor mouse was to be seen, and he went hack and lay 
down again, and was soon fast asleep; when once more 
came the little voice, clear and plaintive, and imploring, 
“Good, dear, giant Offerus, carry me across.” The third 
time he seized his pine-stem and went through the cold 
river. This time he found a tender, fair little boy with 
golden hair. In his left hand was the standard of the 
Lamb; in his right, the globe. He looked at the giant 
with eyes full of love and trust, and Offerus lifted him up 
with two fingers; but, when he entered the river, the little 
child weighed on him like a ton. Heavier and heavier 
grew the weight, until the water almost reached his chin; 
great drops of sweat stood on his brow, and he had nearly 
sunk in the stream with the little one. However, he 
struggled through, and tottering to the other side, set the 
child gently down on the bank, and said, “ My little lord, 
prithee, come not this way again, for scarcely have I es¬ 
caped this time with life.” But the fair child baptized 
Offerus on the spot, and said to him, “ Know all thy sins 
are forgiven; and although thy limbs tottered, fear not, 
nor marvel, but rejoice; thou hast carried the Saviour of 
the world! For a token, plant thy pine-trunk, so long 
dead and leafless, in the earth; to-morrow it shall shoot out 
green twigs. And henceforth thou shalt be called not 
Offerus, but Christopher.” Then Christopher folded his 
hands and prayed and said, “ I feel my end draws nigh. My 


50 


THE SGHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


limbs tremble; my strength fails; and God has forgiven 
me all my sins.” Thereupon the child vanished in light; 
and Christopher set his staff in the earth. And so on the 
morrow, it shot out green leaves and red blossoms like an 
almond. And three days afterward the angels carried 
Christopher to paradise. 

This is the legend which gives me more hope than any 
other. How sweet it would be, if when I tried in some 
humble way to help one and another on the way to the 
Holy City, when the last burden was borne, and the 
strength was failing, the Holy Child should appear to me 
and say, “ Little Else, you have done the work I meant you 
to do—your sins are forgiven;” and then the angels were 
to come and take me up in their arms, and carry me across 
the dark river, and my life were to grow young and bloom 
again in paradise, like St. Christopher’s withered staff! 

But to watch all the long days of life by the river, and 
carry the burdens, and not know if we are doing the right 
thing after all—that is what is so hard! 

Sweet, when the river was crossed, to find that in fulfill¬ 
ing some little, humble, everyday duty, one had actually 
been serving and pleasing the Mightiest, the Saviour of the 
world. But if one could only know it while one was 
struggling through the flood, how delightful that would be! 
How little one would mind the icy water, or the aching 
shoulders, or the tottering, failing limbs! 


PART IV. 

else’s chronicle continued. 

Eisenach, January, 1505. 

Fritz is at home with us again. He looks as much a 
man now as our father, with his mustache and his sword. 
How cheerful the sound of his firm step and his deep voice 
makes the house! When I look at him sometimes, as he 
tosses the children and catches them in his arms, or as he 
flings the balls with Christopher and Pollux, or shoots with 
bow and arrows in the evenings at the city games, my old 
wish recurs that he had lived in the days when our ances¬ 
tors dwelt in the castles in Bohemia, and that Fritz had 
been a knight, to ride at the head of his retainers to battle 



THE SCHON BERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


51 


for some good cause—against the Turks, for instance, who 
are now, they say, threatening the empire, and all Chris¬ 
tendom. My little world at home is wide indeed, and full 
enough for me, but this burgher life seems narrow and poor 
for him. I should like him to have to do with men instead 
of books. Women can read, and learn, and think, if they 
have time (although, of course, not as well as men can); 
I have even heard of women writing books. St. Barbara 
and St. Catherine understood astronomy, and astrology, 
and philosophy, and could speak I do not know how many 
languages. But they could not have gone forth armed 
with shield and spear like St. George of Capadocia, to de¬ 
liver the fettered princess and slay the great African 
dragon. And I should like Fritz to do what women can 
not do. There is such strength in his light, agile frame, 
and such power in his dark eyes; although, certainly, after 
all he had written to us about his princely fare at the 
House at Erfurt, where he is a beneficiary, our mother and 
I did not expect to have seen his face looking so hollow 
and thin. 

He has brought me back my godmother’s gulden. He 
says he is an independent man, earning his own livelihood, 
and quite above receiving any such gratuities. However, 
as I devoted it to Fritz I feel I have a right to spend it on 
him, which is a great comfort, because I can provide a bet¬ 
ter table than we can usually afford, during the few days he 
will stay with us, so that he may never guess how pinched 
we often are. 

I am ashamed of myself, but there is something in this 
return of Fritz which disappoints me. I have looked for¬ 
ward to it day and night through all these two years with 
such longing. I thought we should begin again exactly 
where we left off. I pictured to myself the old daily life 
with him going on again as of old. I thought of our sit¬ 
ting in the lumber-room, and chatting over all our perplex¬ 
ities, our own and the family’s, pouring our hearts into each 
other without reserve or fear, so that it was scarcely like 
talking at all, but like thinking aloud. 

And, now, instead of our being acquainted with every 
detail of each other’s daily life, so that we are aware what 
we are feeling without speaking about it, there is a whole 
history of new experience to be narrated step by step, and 
we do not seem to know where to begin. None of the 


52 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


others can feel this as I do. He is all to the children and 
our parents that he ever was, and why should I expect 
more? Indeed, I scarcely know what I did expect, or what 
I do want. Why should Fritz be more to me than to any 
one else? It is selfish to wish it, and it is childish to im¬ 
agine that two years could bring no change. Could I have 
wished it? Do I not glory in his strength, and in his free 
and manly bearing? And could I wish a student at the 
great university of Erfurt, who is soon to be a bachelor of 
arts, to come and sit on the piles of old books in our 
lumber-room, and to spend his time in gossiping with me? 
Besides, what have I to say? And yet, this evening, when 
the twilight-hour came round for the third time since he 
returned, and he seemed to forget all about it, I could not 
help feeling troubled, and so took refuge here by myself. 

Fritz has been sitting in the family-room for the last 
hour,with all the children round him, telling them histories 
of what the students do at Erfurt; of their poetical club, 
where they meet and recite their own verses, or translations 
of the ancient books which have been unburied lately, and 
yet are fresher, he says, than any new ones, and set every 
one thinking; of the debating meeting, and the great sing¬ 
ing parties, where hundreds of voices join, making music 
fuller than any organ—in both of which Martin Luther 
seems a leader and a prince; and then of the fights among 
the students, in which I do not think Martin Luther has 
joined, but which, certainly, interest Christopher and Pol¬ 
lux more than anything else. The boys were standing on 
each side of Fritz, listening with wide-open eyes; Chriem- 
liild and Atlantis had crept close behind him with their 
sewing; little Thekla was on his knee, playing with his 
sword girdle; and little Eva was perched in her favorite 
place on the window-sill, in front of him. At first she kept 
at a distance from him, and said nothing; not, I think, 
from shyness, for I do not believe that child is afraid of any 
one or anything, but from a quaint way she has of observ¬ 
ing people, as if she were learning them through like a new 
language, or like a sovereign making sure of the character 
of a new subject before she admits him into her service. 
The idea of the little creature treating our Fritz in that 
grand style! But it is of no use resisting it. He has 
passed through his probation like the rest of us, and is as 
much flattered as the grandmother, or any of us, at being 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


53 


admitted into her confidence. When I left, Eva, wno had 
been listening for some time with great attention to his 
student-stories, had herself become the chief speaker, and 
the whole party were attending with riveted interest while 
she related to them her favorite legend of St. Catherine. 
They had all heard it before, but in some way when Eva 
tells these histories they always seem new. I suppose it is 
because she believes them so fervently; it is not as if she 
were repeating something she had heard, but quietly nar¬ 
rating something she has seen, much as one would imagine 
an angel might who had been watching unseen while it all 
happened. And, meantime, her eyes, when she raises 
them, with their fringe of long lashes, seem to look at once 
into your heart and into heaven. 

No wonder Fritz forgets the twilight hour. But it is 
strange he has never once asked about our chronicle. Of 
that, however, I am glad, because I would not for the world 
show him the narrative of our struggles. 

Can it be possible I am envious of little Eva, dear, little, 
loving, orphan Eva? I do rejoice that all the world should 
love him. Yet, it was so happy to be Fritz’s only friend; 
and why should a little stranger child steal my precious 
twilight-hour from me? 

Well, I suppose Aunt Agnes was right, and I made an 
idol of Fritz, and God was angry, and I am being punished. 
But the saints seem to find a kind of sacred pleasure in 
their punishments, and I do not; nor do I feel at all the 
better for them, but the worse, which is another proof how 
altogether hopeless it is for me to try to be a saint. 

Eisenach, February. 

As I wkote those last words in the deepening twilight, 
two strong hands were laid very gently on my shoulder, 
and a voice said: 

“Sister Else, why can you not show me your chronicle?” 

I could make no reply. 

“ You are convicted,” rejoined the same voice. “ Do you 
think I do not know where that gulden came from? Let 
me see your godmother’s purse.” 

I began to feel the tears choking me; but Fritz did not 
seem to notice them. 

“Else,” he said, “you may practice your little deceptive 
arts on all the rest of the family, but they will not do with 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


64 


me. Do you think you will ever persuade me you have 
grown thin by eating sausages and cakes and wonderful 
holiday puddings every day of your life? Do you think 
the hungry delight in the eyes of those boys was occasioned 
by their everyday, ordinary fare? Do you think,” he 
added, taking my hands in one of his, “ I did not see how 
blue and cold, and covered with chilblains these little hands 
were, which piled up the great logs on the hearth when I 
came in this morning?” 

Of course I could do nothing but put my head on his 
shoulder and cry quietly. It was of no use denying any¬ 
thing. Then he added rapidly, in a low deep, voice: 

“ Do you think I could help seeing our mother at her old 
devices, pretending she had no appetite, and liked nothing 
so much as bones and sinews?” 

“Oh, Fritz,” I sobbed, “I cannot help it. What am I 
to do?” 

“At least,” he said, more cheerfully, “promise me, little 
woman, you will never make a distinguished stranger of 
your brother again, and endeavor by all kinds of vain and 
deceitful devices to draw the whole weight of the family 
cares on your own shoulders.” 

“Do you think it is a sin I ought to confess, Fritz?” I 
said; “I did not mean it deceitfully; but I am always 
making such blunders about right and wrong. What can 
I do?” 

“Does Aunt Ursula know?” he asked rather fiercely. 

“No; the mother will not let me tell any one. She 
thinks they would reflect on our father; and he told her 
only last week, he has a plan about a new way of smelting 
lead, which is, I think, to turn it all into silver. That 
would certainly be a wonderful discovery; and he thinks 
the elector would take it up at once, and we should prob¬ 
ably have to leave Eisenach and live near the electoral 
court. Perhaps even the emperor would require us to 
communicate the secretHo him, and then we should have to 
leave the country altogether; for you know there are great 
lead-mines in Spain; and if once people could make silver 
out of lead, it would be much easier and safer than going 
across the great ocean to procure the native silver from the 
Indian savages.” 

Fritz drew a long breath. 

“ And meantime?” he said. 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


55 

“Well, meantime!” I said, “it is of course sometimes a 
little difficult to get on.” 

He mused a little while, and then he said: 

“Little Else, I have thought of a plan which may, I 
think, bring us a few guldens—until the process of trans¬ 
muting lead into silver is completed.” 

“Of course,” I said, “after that we shall want nothing, 
but he able to give to those who do want. And oh, Fritz! 
how well we shall understand how to help people who are 
poor. Do you think that is why God lets us be so poor 
ourselves so long, and never seems to hear our prayers?” 

“It would be pleasant to think so, Else,” said Fritz, 
gravely; “but it is very difficult to understand how to 
please God, or how to make our prayers reach him at all— 
at least when we are so often feeling and doing wrong.” 

It cheered me to see that Fritz does not despair of the 
great invention succeeding one day. He did not tell me 
what his own plan is. 

Does Fritz then also feel so sinful and so perplexed how 
to please God? Perhaps a great many people feel the 
same. It is very strange. If it had only pleased God to 
make it a little plainer! I wonder if that book Eva lost 
would tell us anything? 

After that evening the barrier between me and Fritz was 
of course quite gone, and we seemed closer than ever. We 
had delightful twilight talks in our lumber-room, and I 
love him more than ever. So that Aunt Agnes would, I 
suppose, think me more of an idolater than before. But 
it is very strange that idolatry should seem to do me so 
much good. I seem to love all the world better for loving 
Fritz, and to find everything easier to bear, by having him 
to unburden everything on, so that I had never fewer little 
sins to confess than during the two weeks Fritz was at 
home. If God had only made loving brothers and sisters 
and the people at home the way to please him, instead of 
not loving them too much, or leaving them all to bury 
one’s self in a cold convent, like Aunt Agnes! 

Little Eva actually persuaded Fritz to begin teaching 
her the Latin grammar! I suppose she wishes to be like 
her beloved St. Catherine, who was so learned. And she 
says all the holy books, the prayers and the hymns, are in 
Latin, so that she thinks it must be a language God par¬ 
ticularly loves. She asked me a few days since if they 
speak Latin in heaven. 


56 


THE SCH6NBEBG-COTTA FAMILY . 


Of course I could not tell. I told her I believed the 
Bible was originally written in two other languages, the 
languages of the Greeks and the Jews, and that I had 
heard some one say Adam and Eve spoke the Jews’ lan¬ 
guage in paradise, which I suppose God taught them. 

But I have been thinking over it since, and I should not 
wonder if Eva is right. 

Because, unless Latin is the language of the saints and 
holy angels in heaven, why should God wish the priests to 
speak it everywhere, and the people to say the ave and 
paternoster in it? We should understand it all so much 
better in German; but of course Latin is the language of 
the blessed saints and angels, that is a reason for it. If we 
do not always understand, they do, which is a great comfort. 
Only I think it is a very good plan of little Eva’s to try 
and learn Latin; and when I have more time to be reli¬ 
gious, perhaps I may try also. 


EXTRACTS FROM FRIEDRICH’S CHRONICLE. 

Erfurt, 1505. 

The university seems rather a cold world after the dear 
old home at Eisenach. But it went to my heart to see how 
our mother and Else struggle and how worn and thin they 
look. Happily for them, they have still hope in the great 
invention, and I would not take it away for the world. 
But meantime I must at once do something to help. 
I can sometimes save some viands from my meals, which 
are portioned out to us liberally, on this foundation, and 
sell them. And I can occasionally earn a little by copying 
themes for the richer students, or sermons, and postils for 
the monks. The printing press has certainly made that 
means of maintenance more precarious; but printed books 
are still very dear, and also very large, and the priests are 
often glad of small copies of fragments of the postils or 
orations of the fathers, written oft in a small, clear hand, 
to take with them on their circuits around the villages. 
There is also writing to be done for the lawyers, so that I 
do not despair of earning something; and if my studies are 
retarded a little, it does not so much matter, "it is not for 
me to aspire to great things, unless indeed they can be 
reached by small and patient steps. I have a work to do 



THE SCBONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


57 


for the family. My youth must be given to supporting 
them by the first means I can find. If I succeed, perhaps 
Christopher or Pollux will have leisure to aim higher than 
I can; or, perhaps, in middle or later life, I myself shall 
have*leisure’to pursue the studies of these great old classics, 
which seem to make the horizon of our thoughts so wide, 
and the world so glorious and large, and life so deep. It 
would certainly be a great delight to devote one’s self, as 
Martin Luther is now able to do, to literature and philoso¬ 
phy. His career is opening nobly. This spring he has 
taken his degree as master of arts, and he has been lecturing 
on Aristotle’s physics and logic. He has great power of 
making dim things clear, and old things fresh. His 
lectures are crowded. He is also studying law, in order to 
qualify himself for some office in the state. His parents 
(judging from his father’s letters) seem to center all their 
hopes in him; and it is almost the same here at the univer¬ 
sity. Great things are expected of him; indeed there 
scarcely seems any career that is not open to him. And 
he is a man of such heart, as well as intellect, that he 
seems to make all the university professors, as well as the 
students, look on him as a kind of possession of their own. 
All seem to feel a property in his success. Just as it was 
with our little circle at Eisenach so it is with the great cir¬ 
cle at the university. He is our Master Martin; and in 
every step of his ascent we ourselves feel a little higher. I 
wonder, if his fame should indeed spread as we anticipate, 
if it will be the same one day with all Germany? if the 
whole land will say exultingly by-and-by —our Martin 
Luther? 

Not that he is without enemies; his temper is hot and 
his heart too warm for that negative distinction of phleg¬ 
matic negative natures. 


June, 1505. 

Martin Luther came to me a few days since, looking 
terribly agitated. His friend Alexius has been assassinated, 
and he takes it exceedingly to heart; not only, I think, 
because of the loss of one he loved, but because it brings 
death so terribly near, and awakens again those questionings 
which I know are in the depths of his heart, as well as of 
mine, about God, and judgment, and the dark, dread future 


58 THE SCEONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 

before os, which we cannot solve, yet cannot escape nor 
forget. 

To-day we met again, and he was full of a book he had 
discovered in the university library, where he spends most 
of his leisure hours. It was a Latin Bible, which he had 
never seen before in his life. He marveled greatly to see 
so much more in it than in the Evangelia read in the 
churches, or in the collections of homilies. He was called 
away to lecture, or, he said, he could have read on for 
hours. Especially one history seems to have impressed him 
deeply. It was in the Old Testament. It was the story of 
the child Samuel and his mother Hannah. “ He read it 
quickly through,” he said, “with hearty delight and joy;” 
and because this was all new to him, he began to wish from 
the bottom of his heart that God would one day bestow on 
him such a book for his own. 

I suppose it is the thought of his own pious mother 
which makes this history interest him so peculiarly. It is 
indeed a beautiful history, as he told it me, and makes one 
almost wish one had been born in the times of the old 
Hebrew monarchy. It seems as if God listened so graciously 
and readily then to that poor sorrowful woman’s prayers. 
And if we could only, each of us, hear that voice from 
heaven, how joyful it would be to reply, like that blessed 
child, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth;” and then 
to learn, without possibility of mistake, what God really 
requires of each of us. I suppose, however, the monks do 
feel as sure of their vocation as the holy child of old, when 
they leave home and the world for the service of the 
church. It would be a great help if other people had voca¬ 
tions to their various works in life, like the prophet Samuel 
and (I suppose) the monks, that we might all go on fear¬ 
lessly, with a firm step, each in his appointed path, and 
feel sure that we are doing the right thing, instead of per¬ 
haps drawing down judgments on those we would die to 
serve, by our mistakes and sins. It can hardly be intended 
that all men should be monks and nuns. Would to heaven, 
therefore, that laymen had also their vocation, instead of 
this terrible uncertainty and doubt that will shadow the 
heart at times, that we may have missed our path (as I did 
that night in the snow-covered forest), and, like Cain, be 
flying from the presence of God, and gathering on us and 
ours his curse. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


59 


July 12, 1505. 

There is a great gloom over the university. The plague 
is among us. Many are lying dead who, only last week, 
were full of youth and hope. Numbers of the professors, 
masters and students, have fled to their homes, or to various 
villages in the nearest reaches of the Thuringian forest. 
The churches are thronged at all the services. The priests 
and monks (those who remain in the infected city) take 
advantage of the terror the presence of the pestilence ex¬ 
cites, to remind people of the more awful terrors of that 
dreadful day of judgment and wrath which no one will be 
able to flee. Women, and sometimes men, are borne faint¬ 
ing from the churches, and often fall at once under the 
infection, and never are seen again. Martin Luther seems 
much troubled in mind. This epidemic, following so close 
on the assassination of his friend, seems to overwhelm him. 
But he does not talk of leaving the city. Perhaps the ter¬ 
rors which weigh most on him are those the preachers recall 
so vividly to us just now, from which there is no flight by 
change of place, but only by change of life. During this 
last week, especially since he was exposed to a violent 
thunder-storm on the highroad near Erfurt, he has seemed 
strangely altered. A deep gloom is on his face, and he 
seems to avoid his old friends. I have scarcely spoken to 
him. 

July 14. 

To-day, to my great surprise, Martin has invited me and 
several other of his friends to meet at his rooms on the day 
after to-morrow, to pass a social evening in singing and 
feasting. The plague has abated; yet I rather wonder at 
any one thinking of merry-making yet. They say, how¬ 
ever, that a merry heart is the best safeguard. 


July 17. 

The secret of Martin Luther’s feast is open now. The 
whole university is in consternation. He has decided on 
becoming a monk. Many think it is a sudden impulse, 
which may yet pass away. I do not. I believe it is the 
result of the conflicts of years, and that he has only yielded, 
in this act, to convictions which have been recurring to him 
continually during all his brilliant university career. 


60 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


Never did lie seem more animated than yesterday even¬ 
ing. The hours flew by in eager, cheerful conversation. 
A weight seemed removed from us. The pestilence was 
departing; the professors and students were returning. 
We felt life resuming its old course, and ventured once 
more to look forward with hope. Many of us had com¬ 
pleted our academical course, and were already entering the 
larger world beyond—the university of life. Some of us 
had appointments already promised and most of us had hopes 
of great things in the future; the less definite the pros¬ 
pects, perhaps the most brilliant. Martin Luther did not 
hazard any speculations as to his future career; but that 
surprised none of us. His fortune, we said, was insured 
already; and many a jesting claim was put in for his 
future patronage, when he should be a great man. 

We had excellent music also, as always at any social 
gathering where Martin Luther is. His clear, true voice 
was listened to with applause in many a well-known song, 
and echoed in joyous choruses afterward by the whole 
party. So the evening passed, until the university hour 
for repose had nearly arrived; when suddenly, in the silence 
after the last note of the last chorus had died away, he bid 
us all farewell; for on the morrow, he said, he proposed to 
enter the Augustinian monastery as a novice! At first, 
some treated this as a jest; but his look and bearing soon 
banished that idea. Then all earnestly endeavored to dis¬ 
suade him from his purpose. Some spoke of the expecta¬ 
tions the university had formed of him—others, of the 
career in the world open to him; but at all this he only 
smiled. When, however, one of us reminded him of his 
father, and the disappointment it might cause in his home, 
I noticed that a change came over his face, and I thought 
there was a slight quiver on his lip. But all—friendly re¬ 
mark, calm remonstrance, fervent, affectionate entreaties— 
all were unavailing. 

“To-day,” he said, “you see me; after this, you will see 
me no more.” 

Thus we separated. But this morning, when some of 
his nearest friends went to his rooms early, with the faint 
hope of yet inducing him to listen, while we pressed on him 
the thousand unanswerable arguments which had occurred 
to us since we parted from him, his rooms were empty, and 
he was nowhere to be found. To all our inquiries we re- 


THE SCRONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 61 

ceived no reply but that Master Martin had gone that 
morning, before it was light, to the Augustinian cloister. 

Thither we followed him, and knocked loudly at the 
heavy convent gates. After some minutes they were 
slightly opened, and a sleepy porter appeared. 

“Is Martin Luther here?” we asked. 

“He is here,” was the reply; not, we thought, without a 
little triumph in the tone. 

“ We wish to speak with him,” demanded one of us. 

“No one is to speak with him,” was the grim rejoinder. 

“Until when?” we asked. 

There was a little whispering inside, and then came the 
decisive answer, “Not for a month, at least.” 

We would have lingered to parley further, but the heavy 
nailed doors were closed against us, we heard the massive 
bolts rattle as they were drawn, and all our assaults with 
fists or iron staffs on the convent gates, from that moment 
did not awaken another sound within. 

“Dead to the world, indeed!” murmured one at length; 
“the grave could not be more silent.” 

Baffled, and hoarse with shouting, we wandered back 
again to Martin Luther’s rooms. The old familiar rooms, 
where we had so lately spent hours with him in social con¬ 
verse; where I and many of us had spent so many an hour 
in intimate, affectionate intercourse—his presence would 
be there no more; and the unaltered aspect of the mute, 
inanimate things only made the emptiness and change 
more painful by the contrast. 

And yet, when we began to examine more closely, the 
aspect of many things was changed. His flute and lute, 
indeed, lay on the table, just as he had left them on the 
previous evening. But the books—scholastic, legal, and 
classical—were piled up carefully in one corner, and 
directed to the booksellers. In looking over the well- 
known volumes, I only missed two, Virgil and Plautus; I 
suppose he took these with him. While we were looking 
at a parcel neatly rolled up in another place, the old man 
who kept his rooms in order came in, and said, “That is 
Master Martin’s master’s robe, his holiday attire, and his 
master’s ring. They are to be sent to his parents at 
Mansfeld.” 

A choking sensation came over me as I thought of the 
father who had struggled so hard to maintain his son, and 


62 


THE SCHONBEllG-COTTA FAMILY. 


had hoped so much from him, receiving that packet. Not 
from the dead. Worse than from the dead, it seemed to 
me. Deliberately self-entombed; deliberately with his own 
hands building up a barrier between him and all who loved 
him best. With the dead, if they are happy, we may hold 
communion—at least the creed speaks of the communion 
of saints; we may pray to them; or, at the worst, we may 
pray for them. But between the son in the convent and 
the father at Mansfeld, the barrier is not merely one of 
stone and earth. It is of the impenetrable iron of will and 
conscience. It would be a temptation now for Martin 
Luther to pour out his heart in affectionate words to 
father, mother, or friend. 

And yet, if he is right—if the flesh is only to be subdued, 
if God is only to be pleased, if heaven is only to be won in 
this way—it is of little moment indeed what the suffering 
may be to us or any belonging to us, in this fleeting life, 
down which the grim gates of death which close it, ever 
cast their long shadow. 

May not Martin serve his family better in the cloister 
than at the emperor’s court, for is not the cloister the court 
of a palace more imperial? we may say, the very audience- 
chamber of the King of kings. Besides, if he had a voca¬ 
tion, what curse might not follow despising it? Happy for 
those whose vocation is so clear that they dare not disobey 
it; or whose hearts are so pure than they would not if they 
daredl 


July 19. 

These two days the university has been in a ferment at 
the disappearance of Martin Luther. Many are indignant 
with him, and more with the monks, who, they say, have 
taken advantage of a fervent impulse, and drawn him into 
their net. Some, however, especially those of the school of 
Mutianus—the humanists—laugh, and say there are ways 
through the cloister to the court—and even to the tiara. 
But those misunderstand Martin. We who know him are 
only too sure that he will be a true monk, and that for him 
thre is no gate from the cloister to the world. 

It appears now that he had been meditating this step 
mpre than a fortnight. 

/■On the first of this month (July) he was walking on the 
road between Erfurt and Stotterheim, when a thunder- 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


63 


storm, which had been gathering over the Thnringian for¬ 
est, and weighing with heavy silence on the plague-laden 
air, suddenly burst over his head. He was alone, and far 
from shelter. Peal followed peal, succeeded by terrible 
silences; the forked lightning danced wildly around him, 
until at length one terrific flash tore up the ground at his 
feet, and nearly stunned him. He was alone, and far from 
shelter; he felt his soul alone and unsheltered. The thun¬ 
der seemed to him the angry voice of an irresistible, 
offended God. The next flash might wither his body to 
ashes, and smite his soul into the flames it so terribly re¬ 
called; and the next thunder-peal which followed might 
echo like the trumpet of doom over him lying unconscious, 
deaf, and mute in death. Unconscious and silent as to his 
body! but who could imagine to what terrible intensity of 
conscious, everlasting anguish his soul might have awak¬ 
ened; what wailings might echo around his lost spirit, 
what cries of unavailing entreaty he might be pouring 
forth! Unavailing then! not perhaps wholly unavailing 
now! He fell on his knees—he prostrated himself on the 
earth, and cried in his anguish and terror, “Help; beloved 
St. Anne, and I will straightway become a monk.” 

The storm rolled slowly away; but the irrevocable words 
had been spoken, and the peals of thunder, as they rumbled 
more and more faintly in the distance, echoed on his heart 
like the dirge of all his worldly life. 

He reached Erfurt in safety, and, distrustful of his own 
steadfastness, breathed nothing of his purpose except to 
those who would, he thought, sustain him in it. This was 
no doubt the cause of his absent and estranged looks, and 
of his avoiding us during that fortnight. 

He confided his intention first to Andrew Staffelstein, 
the rector of the university, who applauded and encouraged 
him, and took him at once to the new Franciscan cloister. 
The monks received him with delight, and urged his im¬ 
mediately joining their order. He told them he must first 
acquaint his father of his purpose, as an act of confidence 
only due to a parent who had denied himself so much and 
toiled so hard to maintain his son liberally at the university. 
But the rector and the monks rejoined that he must not 
consult with flesh and blood; he must forsake father and 
mother, and steal away to the cross of Christ. “ Whoso 
putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back,” said 


€4 


TEE SCBONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


they, “is not worthy of the kingdom of God.” To remain 
in the world was peril. To return to it was perdition. 

A few religions women to whom the rector mentioned 
Martin’s intentions, confirmed him in them with fervent 
words of admiration and encouragement. 

Did not one of them relent, and take pity on his mother 
and his father? And yet, I doubt if Martin’s mother 
would have interposed one word of remonstrance between 
him and the cloister. She is a very religious woman. To 
offer her son, her pride, to God, would have been offering 
the dearest part of herself; and women have a strength in 
self-sacrifice, and a mytserious joy, which I feel no doubt 
would have carried her through. 

With Martin’s father it would no doubt have been differ¬ 
ent. He has not a good opinion of the monks, and he has 
a very strong sense of paternal and filial duty. He, the 
shrewd, hard-working, successful peasant, looks on the 
monks as a company of drones, who, in imagining they are 
giving up the delights of the world, are often only giving 
up its duties. He was content to go through any self- 
denial and toil that Martin, the pride of the whole family, 
might have room to develop his abilities. But to have the 
fruit of all his counsel, and care, and work buried in a 
convent, will be very bitter to him. It was terrible advice 
for the rector to give a son. And yet, no doubt, God has 
the first claim; and to expose Martin to any influence 
which might have induced him to give up his vocation, 
would have been perilous indeed. No doubt the conflict 
in Martin’s heart was severe enough as it was. His nature 
is so affectionate, his sense of filial duty so strong, and his 
honor and love for his parents so deep. Since the step is 
taken, Holy Mary aid him not to draw back! 

December, 1505. 

This morning I saw a sight I never thought to have 
seen. A monk in the gray frock and cowl of the Augus- 
tinians, was pacing slowly through the streets with a heavy 
sack on his shoulders. The ground was covered with 
snow, his feet were bare; but it was no unfrequent sight; 
and I was idly and half-unconsciously watching him pause 
at door after door, and, humbly receiving any contributions 
that were offered, stow them away in the convent-sack, 
when at length he stopped at the door of the house I was 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


65 

in, and then, as his face turned np toward the window 
where I stood, I caught the eye of Martin Luther! 

I hurried to the door with a loaf in my hand, and, before 
offering it to him, would have embraced him as of old; but 
he bowed low as he received the bread, until his forehead 
nearly touched the ground, and, murmuring a Latin 
“Gratias,” would have passed on. 

“Martin,” I said, “do you not know me?” 

“I am on the service of the convent,” he said. “It is 
against the rules to converse or to linger.” 

It was hard to let him go without another word. 

“ God and the saints help thee, Brother Martin!” I said. 

He half turned, crossed himself, bowed low once more, 
as a maid-servant threw him some broken meat, said 
meekly, “God be praised for every gift he bestoweth,” and 
went on his toilsome quest for alms with stooping form and 
downcast eyes. But how changed his face was! The flush 
of youth and health quite faded from the thin, hollow 
cheeks; the fire of wit and fancy all dimmed, in the red, 
sunken eyes! Fire there is indeed in them still, but it 
seemed to me of the kind that consumes—not that warms 
and cheers. 

They are surely harsh to him at the convent. To send 
him who was the pride and ornament of the university not 
six months ago, begging from door to door, at the houses 
of friends and pupils, with whom he may not even exchange 
a greeting! Is there no pleasure to the obscure and ignorant 
monks in thus humbling one who was so lately so far above 
them? The hands which wield such rods need to be guided 
by hearts that are very noble or very tender. Nevertheless, 
I have no doubt that Brother Martin inflicts severer dis¬ 
cipline on himself than any that can be laid on him from 
without. It is no external conflict that has thus worn and 
bowed him down in less than half a year. 

I fear he will impose some severe mortification on him¬ 
self for having spoken those few words to which I tempted 
him. 

But if it is his vocation, and if it is for heaven, and if he 
is thereby earning merits to bestow on others, any conflict 
could no "doubt be endured. 


July, 1506. 

Brother Martin’s novitiate has expired, and he has 


66 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


taken the name of Augustine, but we shall scarcely learn 
to call him by it. Several of us were present a few days 
since at his taking the final vows in the Augustinian 
church. Once more we heard the clear, pleasant voice 
which most of us had heard, in song and animated conver¬ 
sation, on that farewell evening. It sounded weak and 
thin, no doubt with fasting. The garb of the novice was 
laid aside, the monk’s frock was put on, and kneeling below 
the altar steps, with the prior’s hands on his bowed head, 
he took the vow in Latin: 

“I, Brother Martin, do make profession and promise 
obedience unto Almighty God, uuto Mary, ever virgin, 
and unto thee, my brother, prior of this cloister, in the 
name and in the stead of the general prior of the order of 
the eremites of St. Augustine, the bishop and his regular 
successors, to live in poverty and chastity after the rule of 
the said St. Augustine until death.” 

Then the burning taper, symbol of the lighted and ever 
vigilant heart, was placed in his hand. The prior mur¬ 
mured a prayer over him, and instantly from the whole of 
the monks burst the hymn “ Veni Sancte Spiritus.” 

He knelt while they were singing; and then the monks 
led him up the steps into the choir, and welcomed him with 
the kiss of brotherhood. 

Within the screen, within the choir, among the holy 
brotherhood inside, who minister before the altar! And 
we, his old friends, left outside in the nave, separated from 
him forever by the screen of that irrevocable vow! 

Forever! Is it forever? Will there indeed be such a 
veil, an impenetrable barrier, between us and him at the 
judgment day? And we outside? A barrier impassable 
forever then, but not now, not yet! 

January, 1507. 

I have just returned from another Christmas at home. 
Things look a little brighter there. This last year, since I 
took my master’s degree, I have been able to help them a 
little more effectually with the money I receive from my 
pupils. It was a delight to take our dear, self-denying, 
loving Else a new dress for holidays, although she protested 
her old crimson petticoat and black jacket were as good as 
ever. The child Eva has still that deep, calm, earnest look 
in her eyes, as if she saw into the world of things unseen 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. (ft 

and eternal, and saw .there what filled her heart with joy. 
I suppose it is that angelic depth of her eyes, in contrast 
with the guileless, rosy smile of the childlike lips, which 
gives the strange charm to her face, and makes one think 
of the pictures of the child-angels. 

She can read the church Latin now easily, and delights 
especially in the old hymns. When she repeats them in 
that soft, reverent, childish voice, they seem to me deeper 
and more sacred than when sung by the fullest choir. Her 
great favorite is St. Bernard’s “ Jesu Dulcis Memoria,” 
and his “ Salve Caput Cruentatumbut some verses of the 
“Dies Irae” also are very often on her lips. I used to hear 
her warbling softly about the house, or at her work, with 
a voice like a happy dove hidden in the depths of some 
quiet wood : 


“ Querens me sedisti lassus,” 

“ Jesu mi dulcissime, Domine ccelorum, 

Conditor omnipotens, Rex universorum; 

Quis jam actus sufficit mirari gestorum, 

Quae te ferre compulit salus miserorum. 

“ Te de coeli caritas traxit animarum, 

Pro quibus palatium deserens praeclarum; 

Miseram ingrediens vallem lacrymarum, 

Opus durum suscipis, et iter amarum.”* 

The sonorous words of the ancient imperial language 
sound so sweet and strange, and yet so familiar from the 
fresh childish voice. Latin seems from her lips no more a 
dead language. It is as if she had learned it naturally in 
infancy from listening to the songs of the angels who 
watched her in her sleep, or from the lips of a sainted 
mother bending over her pillow from heaven. 

One thing, however, seems to disappoint little Eva. She 
has a sentence taken from a book her father left her before 
he died, but which she was never allowed to see afterward. 


*“ Jesus, Sovereign Lord of lieaven, sweetest Friend to me, 

King of all the universe, all was made by thee; 

Who can know or comprehend the wonders thou hast wrought, 
Since the saving of the lost thee so low hath brought? 

“ Thee the love of souls drew down from beyond the sky— 

Drew thee from thy glorious home, thy palace bright and highl 
To this narrow vale of tears thou thy footsteps bendest; 

Hard the work thou tak’st on thee, rough the way thou wendest!” 



68 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


She is always hoping to find the book in which this sen¬ 
tence was, and has not yet succeeded. 

I have little doubt myself that the book was some heret¬ 
ical volume belonging to her father, who was executed for 
being a Hussite. It is to be hoped, therefore, she will 
never find it. She did not tell me this herself, probably 
because Else, to whom she mentioned it, discouraged her in 
such a search. We all feel it is a great blessing to have 
rescued that innocent heart from the snares of those per¬ 
nicious heretics, against whom our Saxon nation made such 
a noble struggle. There are not very many of the Hussites 
left now in Bohemia. As a national party they are indeed 
destroyed, since the Calixtines separated from them. 
There are, however, still a few dragging out a miserable 
existence among the forests and mountains; and it is re¬ 
ported that these opinions have not yet even been quite 
crushed in the cities, in spite of the vigorous measures used 
against them, but that not a few secretly cling to their 
tenets, although outwardly conforming to the church. So 
inveterate is the poison of heresy, and so great the danger 
from which little Eva has been rescued. 

Erfurt, May 2, 1507. 

To-day once more the seclusion and silence which have 
enveloped Martin Luther since he entered the cloister 
have been broken. This day he has been consecrated 
priest, and has celebrated his first mass. There was a 
great feast at the Augustinian convent; offerings poured 
in abundance into the convent treasury, and Martin’s 
father, John Luther, came from Mansfeld to be present at 
the ceremony. He is reconciled at last to his son (whom 
for a long time he refused to see), although not, I believe, 
to his monastic profession. It is certainly no willing sacri¬ 
fice on the father’s part. And no wonder. After toiling 
for years to place his favorite son in a position where his 
great abilities might have scope, it must have been hard to 
see everything thrown away just as success was attained, 
for what seemed to him a willful, superstitious fancy. And 
without a word of dutiful consultation to prepare him for 
the blow! 

Having, however, at last made up his mind to forgive his 
son, he forgave him like a father, and came in pomp with 
precious gifts to do him honor. He rode to the convent 


THE SCRONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


69 


gate with an escort of twenty horsemen, and gave his son a 
present of twenty florins. 

Brother Martin was so cheered by the reconciliation, 
that at the ordination feast he ventured to try to obtain 
from his father not only pardon, but sanction and approval. 
It was of the deepest interest to me to hear his familiar, 
eloquent voice again, pleading for his father’s approval. 
But he failed. In vain he stated in his own fervent words 
the motives that had led to his vow; in vain did the monks 
around support and applaud all he said. The old man was 
not to be moved. 

“Dear father,” said Martin, “what was the reason of thy 
objecting to my choice to become a monk? Why wert 
thou then so displeased, and perhaps art not reconciled yet? 
It is such a peaceful and godly life to live.” 

I cannot say that Brother Martin’s worn and furrowed 
face spoke much for the peacefulness of his life; but Mas¬ 
ter John Luther boldly replied in a voice that all at the 
table might hear: 

“Didst thou never hear that a son must be obedient to 
his parents? And, you learned men, did you never read 
the Scriptures, ‘Thou shal honor thy father and thy 
mother?’ God grant that those signs you speak of may not 
prove to be lying wonders of Satan.” 

Brother Martin attempted no defense. A look of sharp 
pain came over his face, as if an arrow had pierced his 
heart; but he remained quite silent. 

Yet he is a priest; he is endued with a power never com¬ 
mitted even to the holy angels—to transubstantiate bread 
into God—to sacrifice for the living and the dead. 

He is admitted into the inner circle of the court of 
heaven. 

He is on board that sacred ark which once he saw por¬ 
trayed at Magdeburg, where priests and monks sail safely 
amid a drowning world. And what is more, he himself 
may, from his safe and sacred vessel, stoop down and rescue 
perishing men; perhaps confer unspeakable blessings on 
the soul of that very father whose words so wounded him. 

For such ends well may he bear that the arrow should 
pierce his heart. Did not a sword pierce thine, oh mourn¬ 
ful mother of consolations? 

And he is certain of his vocation. He does not think as 
we in the world so often must, “ Is God leading me, or the 



70 


THE SCHONBEllG-COTTA FAMILY. 


devil? Am I resisting his higher calling in only obeying 
the humbler call of everyday duty? Am I bringing down 
blessings on those I love, or curses?” 

Brother Martin, without question, has none of these dis¬ 
tracting doubts. He may well bear any other anguish 
which may meet him in the ways of God, and because he 
has chosen them. At least he has not to listen to such 
tales as I have heard lately from a young knight, Ulrich 
von Hutten, who is studying here at present, and has things 
to relate of the monks, priests, and bishops in Borne itself 
which tempt one to think all invisible things a delusion, 
and all religion a pretense. 


PABT V. 
else’s chronicle. 

Eisenach, January, 1510. 

We have passed through a terrible time; if, indeed, we 
are through it! 

The plague has been at Eisenach; and, alas! is here still. 

Fritz came home to us as usual at Christmas. Just be¬ 
fore he left Erfurt the plague had broken out in the uni¬ 
versity. But he did not know it. When first he came to 
us he seemed quite well, and was full of spirits, but on the 
second day he complained of cold and shivering, with pain 
in the head, which increased toward the evening. His 
eyes then began to have a fixed, dim look, and he seemed 
unable to speak or think long connectedly. 

I noticed that the mother watched him anxiously that 
evening, and at its close, feeling his hands feverish, she 
said very quietly that she should sit up in his room that 
night. At first, he made some resistance, but he seemed 
too faint to insist on anything; and, as he rose to go to 
bed, he tottered a little, and said he felt giddy, so that my 
mother drew his arm within hers and supported him to his 
room. 

Still I did not feel anxious; but when Eva and I reached 
our room, she said, in that quiet, convincing manner which 
she had even as a child, fixing her large eyes on mine: 

“Cousin Else, Fritz is very ill.” 



TEE SGEoNBETtO-COTTA FAMILY. 


71 


“I think not, Eva,” I said; ‘‘and no one wonld feel 
anxious about him as soon as I should. He caught a chill 
on his way from Erfurt. You know it was late when he 
arrived, and snowing fast, and he was so pleased to see us, 
and so eager in conversation that he would not change his 
things. It is only a slight feverish cold. Besides, our 
mother’s manner was so calm when she wished us good 
night. I do not think she is anxious. She is only sitting 
up with him for an hour or two to see that he sleeps.” 

“Cousin Else,” replied Eva, “did you not see the 
mother’s lip quiver when she turned to wish us good 
night?” 

“No, Eva,” said I; “I was looking at Fritz.” 

And so we went to bed. But I thought it strange that 
Eva, a girl of sixteen, should be more anxious than I was, 
and I his sister. Hope is generally so strong, and fear so 
weak, before one has seen many fears realized, and many 
hopes disappointed. Eva, however, had always a way of 
seeing into the truth of things. I was very tired with the 
day’s work (for I always rise earlier than usual when Fritz 
is here, to get everything done before he is about), and I 
must very soon have fallen asleep. It was not midnight 
when I was roused by the mother’s touch upon my arm. 

The light of the lamp she held showed me a paleness in 
her face and an alarm in her eyes which awoke me thor¬ 
oughly in an instant. 

“Else,” she said, “go into the boys’ room and send 
Christopher for a physician. I cannot leave Fritz. But 
do not alarm your father,” she added, as she crept again 
out of the room after lighting our lamp. 

I called Christopher, and in five minutes he was dressed 
and out of the house. When I returned to our room Eva 
was sitting dressed on the bed. She had not been asleep, 
I saw. I think she had been praying, for she held the 
crucifix in her clasped hands, and there were traces of tears 
on her cheek, although, when she raised her eyes to me, 
they were clear and tearless. 

“ What is it, Cousin Else?” she said. “ When I went for 
a moment to the door of his room he was talking. It was 
his voice, but with such a strange, wild tone in it. I think 
he heard my step, although I thought no one would, I 
stepped so softly, for he called ‘Eva, Eva!’ but the mother 
came to the door and silently motioned me away. But you 


72 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


may go, Else,” she added, with a passionate rapidity very 
unusual with her. “Go and see him.” 

I went instantly. He was talking very rapidly and vehe¬ 
mently, and in an incoherent way it was difficult to under¬ 
stand. My mother sat quite still, holding his hand. His 
eyes were not bright as in fever, but dim and fixed. Yet 
he was in a raging fever. His hand, when I touched it, 
burned like fire, and his face was flushed like crimson. I 
stood there quite silently beside my mother until the phy¬ 
sician came. At first Fritz’s eyes followed me; then they 
seemed watching the door for some one else; but in a few 
minutes the dull vacancy came over them again, and he 
seemed conscious of nothing. 

At last the physician came. He paused a moment at 
the door, and held a bag of myrrh before him; then ad¬ 
vancing to the bed, he drew aside the clothes and looked at 
Fritz’s arm. 

“ Too plain!” he exclaimed, starting hack as he perceived 
a black swelling there. “It is the plague!” 

My mother followed him to the door. 

“Excuse me, madam,” he said, “life is precious, and I 
might carry the infection into the city.” 

“Can nothing be done?” she said. 

“Not much,” he said bluntly; and then, after a mo¬ 
ment’s hesitation, touched by the distress in her face, he 
returned to the bedside. “I have touched him,” he mur¬ 
mured, as if apologizing to himself for incurring the risk; 
“ the mischief is done, doubtless, already.” And taking out 
his lancet, he bled my brother’s arm. 

Then, after binding up the arm, he turned to me and 
said, “Get cypress and juniper wood, and burn them in a 
brasier in this room, with rosin and myrrh. Keep your 
brother as warm as possible—do not let in a breath of air;” 
and he added, as I followed him to the door, “on no ac¬ 
count suffer him to sleep for a moment, and let no one 
come near him but you and your mother.” 

When I returned to the bedside, after obeying these 
directions, Fritz’s mind was wandering; and although we 
could understand little that he said, he was evidently in 
great distress. He seemed to have comprehended the 
physician’s words, for he frequently repeated, “ The plague! 
the plague! I have brought a curse upon my house!” and 
then he would wander, strangely calling upon Martin 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


73 


Luther and Eva to intercede and obtain pardon for him, as 
if he was invoking saints in heaven; and occasionally he 
would repeat fragments of Latin hymns. 

It was dreadful to have to keep him awake; to have to 
rouse him, whenever he showed the least symptom of slum¬ 
ber, to thoughts which so perplexed and troubled his poor 
brain. But on the second night the mother fainted away, 
and I had to carry her to her room. Her dear thin frame 
was no heavy weight to bear. I laid her on the bed in our 
room, which was the nearest. Eva appeared at the door as 
I stood beside our mother. Her face was as pale as death. 
Before I could prevent it, she came up to me, and taking 
my hands said: 

“ Cousin Else, only promise me one thing; if he is to die, 
let me see him once more.” 

“I dare not promise anything, Eva,” I said; “consider 
the infection!” 

“What will the infection matter to me if he dies?” she 
said; “I am not afraid to die.” 

“Think of the father and the children, Eva,” I said; “if 
our mother and I should be seized next, what would they 
do?” 

“Chriemhild will soon be old enough to take care of 
them,” she said very calmly “promise me, promise me, 
Else, or I will see him at once.” 

And I promised her, and she threw her arms around me, 
and kissed me. Then I went back to Fritz, leaving Eva 
chafing my mother’s hands. It was of no avail, I thought, 
to try to keep her from contagion, now that she had held 
my hands in hers. 

When I came again to Fritz’s bedside, he was asleep! 
Bitterly I reproached myself; but what could I have done? 
He was asleep—sleeping quietly, with soft, even breath¬ 
ing. I had not courage to awake him; but I knelt down 
and implored the blessed Virgin and all the saints to have 
mercy on me, and spare him. And they must have heard 
me; for in spite of my failure in keeping the physician’s 
orders, Fritz began to recover from that very sleep. 

Our grandmother says it was a miracle; “unless,” she 
added, “the doctor was wrong.” 

He awoke from the sleep refreshed and calm, but weak 
as an infant. 

It was delightful to meet his eyes when first he awoke, 


74 


TEE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


with the look of quiet recognition in them, instead of that 
wild, fixed stare, or thpt restless wandering, to look once 
more into his heart through his eyes. He looked at me a 
long time with a quiet content, without speaking, and then 
he said, holding out his hand to me: 

“Else, you have been watching long here. You look 
tired; go and rest.” 

“It rests me best to look at you,” I said, “and see you 
better.” 

He seemed too weak to persist, and after taking some 
food and cooling drinks, he fell asleep again, and so did I; 
for the next thing I was conscious of was our mother gently 
placing a pillow underneath my head, which had sunk on 
the bed where I had been kneeling, watching Fritz. I was 
ashamed of being such a bad nurse; but our mother insisted 
on my going to our room to seek rest and refreshment. 
And for the next few days we took it in turns to sit beside 
him, until he began to gain strength. Then we thought 
he might like to see Eva; but when she came to the door, 
he eagerly motioned her away, and said: 

“Do not let her venture near me. Think if I were to 
bring this judgment of God on her!” 

Eva turned away, and was out of sight in an instant; but 
the troubled, perplexed expression came back into my 
brother’s eyes, and the feverish flush into his face, and it 
was long before he seemed calm again. 

I followed Eva. She was sitting with clasped hands in 
our room. 

“Oh, Else,” she said, “how altered he is! Are you sure 
he will live even now?” 

I tried to comfort her with the hope which was naturally 
so much stronger in me, because I had seen him in the 
depths from which he was now slowly rising again to life. 
But something in that glimpse of him seemed to weigh on 
her very life; and as Fritz recovered, Eva seemed to grow 
paler and weaker, until the same feverish symptoms came 
over her which we had learned so to dread, and then the 
terrible tokens, the plague-spots, which could not be 
doubted, appeared on the fair, soft arms, and Eva was lying 
with those dim, fixed, pestilence-veiled eyes, and the wan¬ 
dering brain. 

For a day we were able to conceal it from Fritz, but no 
longer. 


TEE SCEON BERG-COTTA FAMILY 75 

On the second evening after Eva was stricken, I found 
him standing by the window of his room, looking into the 
street. I shall never forget the expression of horror in his 
eyes as he turned from the window to me. 

“Else,” he said, “how long have those fires been burning 
in the streets?” 

“ For a week,” I said. “They are fires of cypress-wood 
and juniper, with myrrh and pine gums. The physicians 
say they purify the air.” 

“ I know too well what they are,” he said. “And, Else,” 
he said, “why is Master Biirer’s house opposite closed?” 

“He has lost two children,” I said. 

“And why are those other windows closed all down the 
street?” he rejoined. 

“The people have left, brother,” I said; “but the doc¬ 
tors hope the worst is over now.” 

“Oh just God!” he exclaimed, sinking on a chair and 
covering his face; “I was flying from thee, and I have 
brought the curse on my people!” 

Then, after a minute’s pause, before I could think of 
any words to comfort him he looked up, and suddenly 
demanded: 

“Who are dead in this house, Else?” 

“None, none,” I said. 

“ Who are stricken?” he asked. 

“All the children and the father are well,” I said, “and 
the mother.” 

“ Then Eva is stricken,” he exclaimed, “the innocent for 
the guilty! She will die and be a saint in heaven, and I, 
who have murdered her, shall live, and shall see her no 
more, forever and forever.” 

I could not comfort him. The strength of his agony 
utterly stunned me. I could only burst into tears, so that 
he had to try to comfort me. But he did not speak; he 
only took my hands in his kindly, as of old, without saying 
another word. At length I said: 

“It is not you who brought the plague, dear Fritz; it is 
God who sent it.” 

“I know it is God,” he replied, with such an intense 
bitterness in his tone that I did not attempt another 
sentence. 

That night Eva wandered much as I watched beside her; 
but her delirium was quite different from that of Fritz. 


76 


THE SCHONB ERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


Her spirit seemed floating away on a qniet stream into some 
happy land we could not see. She spoke of a palace, of a 
home, of fields of fragrant lilies, of white-robed saints walk¬ 
ing among them with harps and songs, and of one walking 
there, who welcomed her. Occasionally, too, she mur¬ 
mured snatches of the same Latin hymns that Fritz had 
repeated in his delirium, but in a tone so different, so 
childlike and happy! If ever she appeared troubled, it was 
when she seemed to miss some one, and be searching here 
and there for them; but then she often ended with, “Yes, 
I know they will come; I must wait till they come.” And 
so at last she fell asleep, as if the thought had quieted her. 

I could not hinder her sleeping, whatever the physician 
said—she looked so placid, and had such a happy smile on 
her lips. Only once, when she had lain thus an hour quite 
still, while her chest seemed scarcely to heave with her soft, 
tranquil breathing, I grew alarmed lest she should glide 
thus from us into the arms of the holy angels; and I whis¬ 
pered softly, “Eva, dear Eva!” 

Her ftps parted slightly, and she murmured: 

“Not yet; wait till they come.” 

And then she turned her head again on the pillow, and 
slept on. She awoke quite collected and calm, and then 
she said quietly, “ Where is the mother?” 

“She is resting, darling Eva.” 

She gave a little contented smile, and then, in broken 
words at intervals, she said: 

“Now, I should like to see Fritz. You promised I 
should see him again; and now, if I die, I think he would 
like to see me once more.” 

I went to fetch my brother. He was pacing up and 
down his room, with the crucifix clasped to his breast. At 
first, to my surprise, he seemed very reluctant to come; but 
when I said how much she wished it, he followed me quite 
meekly into her room. Eva was resuming her old com¬ 
mand over us all. She held out her hand, with a look of 
such peace and rest on her face. 

“ Cousin Fritz,” she said at intervals, as she had strength, 
“you have taught me so many things—you have done so 
much for me. Now I wish you to learn my sentence, that 
if I go, it may make you happy, as it does me.” Then 
very slowly and distinctly she repeated the words: “ ‘ God 
so loved the world that He gave His only Son • ’ Cousin 


THE SCUONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


77 


Fritz,” she added, “I do not know the end of the sentence. 
I have not been able to find it, but you must find it. I am 
sure it comes from a good book, it makes me love God so 
much to think of it. Promise me you will find it if I 
should die.” 

He promised, and she was quite satisfied. Her strength 
seemed exhausted, and in a few moments, with my arms 
round her as I sat beside her, and with her hand in Fritz’s, 
she fell into a deep, quiet sleep. 

I felt from that time she would not die, and I whispered 
very softly to Fritz: 

“She will not die; she will recover, and you will not 
have killed her; you will have saved her.” 

But when I looked into his face, expecting to meet a 
thankful, happy response, I was appalled by the expression 
there. 

He stood immovable, not venturing to withdraw his 
hand, but with a rigid, hopeless look in his worn, pale face, 
which contrasted terribly with the smile of deep repose on 
the sleeping face on which his eyes were fixed. 

And so he remained until she awoke, when his whole 
countenance changed for an instant to return her smile. 

Then he said softly,“ God bless you, Eva!” and pressing 
her hand to his lips, he left the room. 

When I saw him again that day, I said: 

“Fritz, you saved Eva’s life. She rallied from the time 
she saw you.” 

“Yes,” he replied very gently, but with a strange impas¬ 
siveness in his face; “I think that may be true. I have 
saved her.” 

But he did not go into her room again; and the next 
day, to our surprise and disappointment, he said suddenly 
that he must leave us. 

He said few words of farewell to any of us, and would 
not see Eva to take leave of her. He said it might disturb 
her. 

But when he kissed me before he went, his hands and 
lips were as cold as death. Yet as I watched him go down 
the street, he did not once turn to wave a last good-bye, as 
he always used to do; but slowly and steadily he went on 
till he was out of sight. 

I turned back into the house with a very heavy heart; 
but when I went to tell Eva Fritz was gone, and tried to 


78 TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

account for his not coming to take leave of her, because I 
thought it would give her pain (and it does seem to me 
rather strange of Fritz), she looked up with her quiet, 
trustful, contented smile and said: 

“ I am not at all pained, Cousin Else. I know Fritz had 
good reasons for it—some good, kind reasons—because he 
always has; and we shall see him again as soon as he can 
come.” 


PART VI. 

FRIEDRICH’S STORY. 

St. Sebastian, Erfurt, January 20, 1510. 

The irrevocable step is taken. I have entered the 
Augustinian cloister. I write in Martin Luther’s cell. 
Truly I have forsaken father and mother, and all that was 
dearest to me, to take refuge at the foot of the cross. I 
have sacrificed everything on earth to my vocation, and yet 
the conflict is not over. I seem scarcely more certain of 
my vocation now than while I remained in the world. 
Doubts buzz around me like wasps, and sting me on every 
side. The devil transforming himself into an angel of 
light perplexes me with the very words of Scripture. The 
words of Martin Luther’s father recur to me, as if spoken 
by a divine voice. “ Honor thy father and thy mother,” 
echoes back to me from the chants of the choir, and seems 
written everywhere on the white walls of my cell. 

And, besides the thunder of these words of God, tender 
voices seem to call me back by every plea of duty, not to 
abandon them to fight the battle of life alone. Else calls 
me from the old lumber-room, “Fritz! brother! who is to 
tell me now what to do?” My mother does not call me 
back, but I seem ever to see her tearful eyes, full of re¬ 
proach and wonder which she tries to repress, lifted up to 
heaven for strength; and her worn, pale face growing more 
wan every day. In one voice and one face only I seem 
never to hear or see reproach or recall; and yet, heaven 
forgive me, those pure and saintly eyes which seem only to 
say, “Go on, Cousin Fritz, God will help thee, and I will 
pray,” those sweet, trustful, heavenly eyes draw me back to 
the world with more power than anything else. 



THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


79 


Is it then too late? Have I lingered in the world so long 
that my heart can never more be torn from it? Is this the 
punishment of my guilty hesitation, that, though I have 
given my body to the cloister, God will not have my soul, 
which evermore must hover like a lost spirit about the 
scenes it was too reluctant to leave? Shall I evermore, 
when I lift my eyes to heaven, see all that is pure and 
saintly there embodied for me in a face which it is deadly 
sin for me to remember? 

Yet I have saved her life. If I brought the curse on my 
people by my sin, was not my obedience accepted? From 
the hour when, in my room alone, after hearing that Eva 
was stricken, I prostrated myself before God, and not dar¬ 
ing to take his insulted name on my lips, approached him 
through his martyred saint, and said, “ Holy Sebastian, by 
the arrows which pierced thy heart, ward off the arrows of 
pestilence from my home, and I will become a monk, and 
change my own guilty name for thine,” from that moment 
did not Eva begin to recover, and from that time were not 
all my kindred unscathed? “ Cadent a latere tuo mille , et 
decern millia a dextris tuis: ad te autem non appropin- 
quabit.” Were not these words literally fulfilled; and while 
many still fell around us, was one afterward stricken in 
my home? 

Holy Sebastian, infallible protector against pestilence by 
thy firmness when accused, confirm my wavering will; by 
thy double death, save me from the second death; by the 
arrows which could not slay thee, thou hast saved us from 
the arrow that flieth by day; by the cruel blows which sent 
thy spirit from the circus to paradise, strengthen me 
against the blows of Satan; by thy body rescued from 
ignominious sepulture and laid in the catacombs among the 
martyrs, raise me from the filth of sin; by thy generous 
pleading for thy fellow-sufferers amidst thine own agonies, 
help me to plead for those who suffer with me; and by all 
thy sorrows, and merits, and joys, plead—oh, plead for 
me, who henceforth bears thy name. 

St. Scholastica, February 10. 

I have been a month in the monastery. Yesterday my 
first probation was over, and I was invested with the white 
garments of the novitiate. 

The whole of the brotherhood were assembled in the 


80 


THE SC HONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


church, when, as kneeling before the prior, he asked me 
solemnly whether I thought my strength sufficient for the 
burden I purposed to take on myself. 

In a low, grave voice he reminded me what those burdens 
are, the rough, plain clothing, the abstemious living, the 
broken rest and long vigils, the toils in the service of the 
order, the reproach and poverty, the humiliations of the 
mendicant, and, above all, the renunciation of self-will and 
individual glory, to be a member of the order, bound to do 
whatever the superiors command, and to go whithersoever 
they direct. 

“With God for my help,” I could venture to say, “of 
this will I make trial.” 

Then the prior replied: 

“We receive thee, therefore, on probation for one year; 
and may God, who has begun a good work in thee, carry it 
on unto perfection.” 

The whole brotherhood responded in a deep amen, and 
then all the voices joined in the hymn: 

“ Magna Pater Augustine, preces nostras suscipe, 

Et per eas conditori nos placare satage, 

Atque rege gregem tuum, summum decus praesulum. 

Amatorem paupertatis, te collaudant pau peres; 

Assertorem veretatis amant veri judices; 

Frangis nobis favos mellis de Scripturis disserens. 

Quae obscura prius erant nobis plana faciens, 

Tu de verbis Salvatoris dulcem panem conficis, 

Et propinas potum vitae de psalmorum nectare. 

Tu de vita clericorum sanctam scribis regulam, 

Quam qui amant et sequuntur viam tenent regiam, 

Atque tuo sancto ductu redeunt ad patriam. 

Regi regum salus, vita, decus et imperium; 

Trinitati laus et honor sit per omne saeculum, 

Qui concives nos ascribat supernorum civium.” * 


* “ Great Father Augustine, receive our prayers, 

And through them effectually reconcile the Creator: 
And rule thy flock, the highest glory of rulers. 

The poor praise thee, lover of poverty; 

True judges love thee, defender of truth; 

Breaking the honeycomb of the honey of Scripture 
thou distributest it to us. 



THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


81 


As thesacred words were chanted they mingled strangely 
in my mind with the ceremonies of the investiture. My 
hair was shorn with the clerical tonsure, my secular dress 
was laid aside; the garments of the novice were thrown on, 
girded with the girdle of rope, while the prior murmured 
softly to me, that with the new robes I must put on the 
new man. 

Then, as the last notes of the hymn died away, I knelt 
and bowed low to receive the prior’s blessing, invoked in 
these words: 

“May God, who hath converted this young man from 
the world, and given him a mansion in heaven, grant that 
his daily walk maybe as becometh his calling; and that he 
may have cause to be thankful for what has this day been 
done.” 

Versicles were then chanted responsively by the monks, 
who forming in procession moved toward the choir where 
we all prostrated ourselves in silent prayer. 

After this they conducted me to the great hall of the 
cloister, where all the brotherhood bestowed on me the kiss 
of peace. 

Once more I knelt before the prior, who reminded me 
that he who persevereth to the end shall he saved; and 
gave me over to the direction of the preceptor, whom the 
new Vicar-General Staupitz has ordered to be appointed to 
each novice. 

Thus the first great ceremony of my monastic life is over, 
and it has left me with a feeling of blank and disappoint¬ 
ment. It has made no change that I can feel in my heart. 
It has not removed the world further off from me. It has 


Making smooth to us what before was obscure, 

Thou, from the words of the Saviour, furnishest 
us with wholesome bread, 

And givest to drink draughts of life from the nectar 
of the psalms. 

Thou writest the holy rule for the life of priests, 

Which, whosoever love and follow, keep the royal road, 
And by Thy holy leading return to their fatherland. 

Salvation to the King of kings, life, glory and dominion; 
Honor and praise be to the Trinity throughout all ages, 
Vo Him who declareth us to be fellow-citizens of the 
citizens of heaven.” 



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THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


only raised another impassable barrier between me and all 
that was dearest to me—impassable as an ocean without 
ships, infrangible as the strongest iron, I am determined 
my will shall make it; but to my heart , alas! thin as gos¬ 
samer, since every faintest, wistful tone of love, which 
echoes from the past, can penetrate it and pierce me with 
sorrow. 

My preceptor is very strict in enforcing the rules of the 
order. Trespasses against the rules are divided into four 
classes—small, great, greater, and greatest, to each of 
which is assigned a different degree of penance. Among 
the smaller are failing to go to church as soon as the sign 
is given, forgetting to touch the ground instantly with the 
hand and to smite the breast if in reading in the choir or in 
singing the least error is committed; looking about during 
the service; omitting prostration at the Annunciation or at 
Christmas; neglecting the benediction in coming in or 
going out; failing to return books or garments to their 
proper places; dropping food; spilling drink; forgetting 
to say grace before eating. Among the great trespasses 
are: contending, breaking the prescribed silence at fasts, 
and looking at women, or speaking to them, except in brief 
replies. 

The minute rules are countless. It is difficult at first to 
learn the various genuflections, inclinations, and prostra¬ 
tions. The novices are never allowed to converse except in 
presence of the prior, are forbidden to take any notice of 
visitors, are enjoined to walk with downcast eyes, to read 
the Scriptures diligently, to bow low in receiving every 
gift, and say, “The Lord he praised in his gifts.” 

How Brother Martin, with his free, bold, daring nature, 
bore those minute restrictions, I know not. To me there 
is a kind of dull, deadening relief in them, they distract 
my thoughts, or prevent my thinking. 

Yet it must be true, my obedience will aid my kindred 
more than all my toil could ever have done while disobedi¬ 
ently remaining in the world. It is not a selfish seeking of 
my own salvation and ease which has brought me here, 
whatever some may think and say, as they did of Martin 
Luther. I think of that ship in the picture at Magdeburg 
he so often told me of. Am I not in it—actually in it 
notv? and shall I not hereafter, when my strength is re¬ 
covered from the fatigue of reaching it, hope to lean over 


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83 


and stretch out my arms to them still struggling in the 
waves of this bitter world, and save them? 

Save them; yes, save their souls! Did not my vow save 
precious lives? And shall not my fastings, vigils, disci¬ 
plines, prayers be as effectual for their souls? And then, 
hereafter, in heaven, where those dwell who, in virgin 
purity, have followed the Lamb, shall I not lean over the 
jasper-battlements and help them from purgatory up the 
steep sides of paradise, and be first at the gate to welcome 
them in? And then, in paradise, where love will no longer 
be in danger of becoming sin, may we not be together for¬ 
ever and forever? And then shall I regret that I abandoned 
the brief polluted joys of earth for the pure joys of eternity? 
Shall I lament then that I chose, according to my vocation, 
to suffer apart from them that their souls might be saved, 
rather than to toil with them for the perishing body? 

Then! then! I, a saint in the city of God! I, a hesi¬ 
tating, sinful novice in the Augustinian monastery at 
Erfurt, who, after resisting for years, have at last yielded 
up my body to the cloister, but have no more power than 
ever to yield up my heart to God! 

Yet I am in the sacred vessel; the rest will surely follow. 
Do all monks have such a conflict? No doubt the devil 
fights hard for every fresh victim he loses. It is, it must 
be, the devil who beckons me through those dear faces, 
who calls me through those familiar voices; for they would 
never call me back. They would hide their pain, and say, 
“Go to God if he calls thee; leave us and go to God.” 
Else, my mother, all would say that, if their hearts broke 
in trying to say it. 

Had Martin Luther such thoughts in this very cell? If 
they are from the Evil One, I think he had, for his assaults 
are strongest against the noblest; and yet I scarcely think 
he can have had such weak doubts as those which haunt 
me. He was not one of those who draw back to perdition; 
nor even of those who, having put their hand to the plow, 
look back, as I, alas! am so continually doing. And what 
does the Scripture say of such? “ they are not fit for the 
kingdom of God.” No exception, no reserve—monk, 
priest, saint; if a man look back, he is not fit for the king¬ 
dom of God. Then what becomes of my hopes of paradise, 
or acquiring merits which may aid others? Turn hack , 
draw back, I will never , although all the devils were to 


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THE 8GH0NBEllO-COTTA FAMILY. 


drive me, or all the world entice me; hut look back, who 
can help that? If a look can kill, what can save? Morti¬ 
fication, crucifixion, not for a day, but daily; I must die 
daily; I must be dead —dead to the world. This cell must 
to me be as a tomb, where all that was most loving in my 
heart must die and be buried. Was it so to Martin 
Luther? Is the cloister that to those bands of rosy, com¬ 
fortable monks, who drink beer from great cans, and feast 
on the best of the land, and fast on the choicest fish? The 
tempter, the tempter again. Judge not, and ye shall not 
be judged. 


St. Eulalia, Erfurt, February. 12, 1510. 

To-day one of the older monks came to me, seeing me, 
I suppose, look downcast and sad, and said, “Fear not, 
Brother Sebastian, the strife is often hard at first; but re¬ 
member the words of St. Jerome: ‘Though thy father 
should lie before thy door weeping and lamenting, though 
thy mother should show thee the body that bore thee, and 
the breast that nursed thee, see that thou trample them 
under foot, and go on straightway to Christ.’ ” 

I bowed my head, according to rule, in acknowledgment 
of his exhortation, and I suppose he thought his words 
comforted and strengthened me; but heaven knows the 
conflict they awakened in my heart when I sat alone to¬ 
night in my cell. “Cruel, bitter, wicked words!” my 
earthly heart would say; my sinful heart, that vigils, 
scourging, scarcely death itself, I fear, can kill. Surely, 
at least, the holy father Jerome spoke of heathen fathers 
and mothers. My mother would not show her anguish to 
win me back; she would say, “My son, my first-born, God 
bless thee; I give thee freely up to God.” Does she not 
say so in this letter which I have in her handwriting— 
which I have and dare not look at, bceause of the storm of 
memory it brings rushing on my heart? 

Is there a word of reproach or remonstrance in her let¬ 
ter? If there were, I would read it; it would strengthen 
me. The saints had that to bear. It is because those 
holy, tender words echo in my heart, from a voice weak 
with feeble health, that day by day, and hour by hour, my 
heart goes back to the home at Eisenach, and sees them 
toiling unaided in the daily struggle for bread, to which I 
have abandoned them, unsheltered and alone. 


THE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


85 


Then at times the thought comes, am I, after all, a 
dreamer, as I have sometimes ventured to think my father 
—neglecting my plain daily task for some Atlantis? and if 
my Atlantis is paradise instead of beyond the ocean, does 
that make so much difference? 

If Brother Martin were only here, he might understand 
and help me; but he has now been nearly two years at 
W ittenberg, where he is, they say, to lecture on theology 
at the elector’s new university, and to be preacher. The 
monks seem nearly as proud of him as the university of 
Erfurt was. 

Yet perhaps, after all, he might not understand my per¬ 
plexities. His nature was so firm and straightforward and 
strong. He would probably have little sympathy with 
wavering hearts and troubled consciences like mine. 

SS. Perpetua and Felicitas, March 7, 
Erfurt, Augustinian Cloister. 

To-day I have been out on my first quest for alms. It 
seemed very strange at first to be begging at familiar doors, 
with the frock and the convent sack on my shoulders; but 
although I tottered a little at times under the weight as it 
grew heavy (for the plague and fasting have left me weak), 
I returned to the cloister feeling better and easier in mind, 
and more hopeful as to my vocation, than I had done 
for some days. Perhaps, however, the fresh air had 
something to do with it; and, after all, it was only a 
little bodily exultation. But certainly such bodily loads 
and outward mortifications are not the burdens which 
weigh the spirit down. There seemed a luxury in the half¬ 
scornful looks of some of my former fellow-students, and 
in the contemptuous tossing to me of scraps of meat by 
some grudging hands; just as a tight pressure, which in 
itself would be pain were we at ease, is relief to severe pain. 

Perhaps, also, oh holy Perpetua and Felicitas, whose day 
it is, and especially thou, oh holy Perpetua, who, after en¬ 
couraging thy sons to die for Christ, wast martyred thyself, 
hast pleaded for my forsaken mother and for me, and sendest 
me this day some ray of hope. 

St. Joseph, March 19, 
Augustinian Cloister, Erfurt. 

St. Joseph, whom I have chosen to be one of the 


86 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


twenty-one patrons whom T especially honor, hear and aid 
me to-day. Thou whose glory it was to have no glory, hut 
meekly to aid others to win their higher crowns, give me 
also some humble place on high; and not to me alone, but 
to those whom I have left still struggling in the stormy 
seas of this perilous world. 

Here, in the sacred calm of the cloister, surely at length 
the heart also must grow calm and cease to beat, except 
with the life of the universal church—the feasts in the 
calendar becoming its events. But when will that be to 
me? 


March 20. 

Has Brother Martin attained this repose yet? An aged 
monk sat with me in my cell yesterday, who told me strange 
tidings of him, which have given me some kind of bitter 
comfort. 

It seems that the monastic life did not at once bring 
repose into his heart. 

This aged monk was Brother Martin’s confessor, and he 
has also been given to me for mine. In his countenance 
there is such a peace as I long for—not a still, death-like 
peace, as if he had fallen into it after the conflict, but a 
living, kindly peace, as if he had won it through the con¬ 
flict, and enjoyed it even while the conflict lasted. 

It does not seem to me that Brother Martin’s scruples 
and doubts were exactly like mine. Indeed, my confessor 
says that in all the years he has exercised his office he has 
never found two troubled hearts troubled exactly alike. 

I do not know that Brother Martin doubted his vocation, 
or looked back to the world; but he seems to have suffered 
agonies of inward torture. His conscience was so quick 
and tender, that the least sin wounded him as if it had 
been the grossest crime. He invoked the saints most de¬ 
voutly-choosing, as I have done from his example, twenty- 
one saints, and invoking three every day, so as to honor 
each every week. He read mass every day, and had an 
especial devotion for the blessed Virgin. He wasted his 
body with fasting and watching. He never intentionally 
violated the minutest rule of the order; and yet the more 
he strove, the more wretched he seemed to be. Like a 
musician whose ear is cultivated to the highest degree, the 
slightest discord was torture to him. Can it then be God’s 


THE SCnoNBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


87 


intention that the growth of our spiritual life is only grow¬ 
ing sensitiveness to pain? Is this true growth? or is it 
that monstrous development of one faculty at the expense 
of others, which is deformity or disease? 

The confessor said thoughtfully, when I suggested this: 

“The world is out of tune, my son, and the heart is out 
of tune. The more our souls vibrate truly to the music of 
heaven, the more, perhaps, they must feel the discords of 
earth. At least it was so with Brother Martin; until at 
last, omitting a prostration or genuflection, would weigh on 
his conscience like a crime. Once, after missing him for 
some time, we went to the door of his cell, and knocked. 
It was barred, and all our knocking drew no response. We 
broke open the door at last, and found him stretched sense¬ 
less on the floor. We only succeeded in reviving him by 
strains of sacred music, chanted by the choristers which we 
brought to his cell. He always dearly loved music, and 
believed it to have a strange potency against the wiles of 
the devil.” 

“He must have suffered grievously,” I said. “I suppose 
it is by such sufferings merit is acquired to aid others?” 

“He did suffer agonies of mind,” replied the old monk. 
“ Often he would walk up and down the cold corridors for 
nights together.” 

“Did nothing comfort him?” I asked. 

“ Yes, my son; some words I once said to him comforted 
him greatly. Once, when I found him in an agony of de¬ 
spondency in his cell, I said, ‘Brother Martin, dost thou 
believe in the forgiveness of sins, as saith the creed?’ His 
face lighted up at once.” 

“The forgiveness of sins!” I repeated slowly. “Father, 
I also believe in that. But forgiveness only follows on con¬ 
trition, confession and penance. How can I ever be sure 
that I have been sufficiently contrite, that I have made an 
honest and complete confession, or that I have performed 
my penance aright?” 

“Ah, my son,” said the old man, “these were exactly 
Brother Martin’s perplexities, and I could only point him 
to the* crucified Lord, and remind him again of the for¬ 
giveness of sins. All we do is incomplete, and when the 
blessed Lord says he forgiveth sins, I suppose he means the 
sins of sinners , who sin in their confession as in everything 
else. My son, he is more compassionate than you think, 


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TEE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


perhaps than any of ns think. At least this is my comfort; 
and if, when I stand before him at last, I find I have made 
a mistake, and thought him more compassionate than he is, 
I trust he will pardon me. It can scarcely, I think, grieve 
him so much as declaring him to be a hard master would.” 

I did not say anything more to the old man. His words 
so evidently were strength and joy to him, that I could not 
venture to question them further. To me, also, they have 
given a gleam of hope. And yet, if the way is not rough 
and difficult, and if it is not a hard thing to please 
Almighty God, why all those severe rules and renunci¬ 
ations—those heavy penances for trifling offenses? 

Merciful we know He is. The emperor may be merciful; 
but if a peasant were to attempt to enter the imperial pres¬ 
ence without the prescribed forms, would he not be driven 
from the palace with curses, at the point of the sword? 
And what are those rules at the court of heaven? 

If perfect purity of heart and life, who can lay claim to 
that? 

If a minute attention to the rules of an order such as this 
of St. Augustine, who can be sure of having never failed in 
this? The inattention which caused the neglect would 
probably let it glide from the memory. And then, what is 
the worth of confession? 

Christ is the Saviour, but only of those who follow him. 
There is forgiveness of sins, but only for those who make 
adequate confession. I, alas! have not followed him fully. 
What priest on earth can assure me I have ever confessed 
fully? 

Therefore I see him merciful, gracious, holy—a Saviour, 
but seated on a high throne, where I can never be sure 
petitions of mine will reach him; and alas! one day to be 
seated on a great white throne, whence it is too sure his 
summoning voice will reach me. 

Mary, Mother of God, Virgin of virgins, mother of 
divine grace—holy Sebastian and all martyrs—great father 
Augustine and all holy doctors, intercede for me, that my 
penances may be accepted as a satisfaction for my sins, and 
may pacify my Judge. 

Annunciation of the Holy Virgin, 

March 25. 

My preceptor has put into my hands the Bible bound 


THE 8CB0NBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


89 


in red morocco which Brother Martin, he says, used to read 
so much. I am to study it in all the intervals which the 
study of the fathers, expeditions for begging, the services 
of the church, and the menial offices in the house which 
fall to the share of novices, allow. These are not many. 
I have never had a Bible in my hands before, and the hours 
pass quickly indeed in my cell which I can spend in read¬ 
ing it. The preceptor, when he comes to call me for the 
midnight service, often finds me still reading. 

It is very different from what I expected. There is 
nothing oratorical in it, there are no labored disquisitions, 
and no minute rules, at least in the New Testament. 

I wish sometimes I had lived in the old Jewish times, 
when there was one temple wherein to worship, certain 
definite feasts to celebrate, certain definite ceremonial rules 
to keep. 

If I could have stood in the temple courts on that great 
day of atonement, and seen the victim slain, and watched 
till the high priest came out from the holy place with his 
hands lifted up in benediction, I should have known abso¬ 
lutely that God was satisfied, and returned to my home in 
peace. Yes, to my home. There were no monasteries, 
apparently, in those Jewish times. Family life was God’s 
appointment then, and family affections had his most 
solemn sanctions. 

In the New Testament, on the contrary, I cannot find 
any of those definite rules. It is all addressed to the 
heart; and who can make the heart right? I suppose it is 
the conviction of this which has made the church since 
then restore many minute rules and discipline, in imitation 
of the Jewish ceremonial; for in the Gospels and Epistles I 
can find no ritual, ceremonial, or definite external rules of 
any kind. 

What advantage, then, has the New Testament over the 
Old? Christ has come. “God so loved the world, that 
he gave his only begotten Son.” This ought surely to make 
a great difference beween us and the Jews. But how? 

St. Gregory of Nyssa, April 9. 

I have found, in my reading to-day, the end of Eva’s 
sentence—“ God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever helieveth in him should not 
verish , hut have everlasting life .” 


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THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


How simple the words are! “Believeth;” that would 
mean, in any other book, “trusteth,” “has reliance” in 
Christ; simply to confide in him, and then receive his 
promise not to perish. 

But here —in this book, in theology—it is necessarily im¬ 
possible that believing can mean anything so simple as that; 
because, at that rate, any one who merely came to the Lord 
Jesus Christ in confiding trust would have everlasting life, 
without any further conditions; and this is obviously out 
of the question. 

For what can be more simple than to confide in one 
worthy of confidence? and what can be greater than ever¬ 
lasting life? 

And yet we know, from all the teaching of the doctors 
and fathers of the church, that nothing is more difficult 
than obtaining everlasting life; and that, for this reason, 
monastic orders, pilgrimages, penances, have been multi¬ 
plied from century to century; for this reason saints have 
forsaken every earthly joy, and inflicted on themselves 
every possible torment; all to obtain everlasting life, which, 
if this word “believeth” meant here what it would mean 
anywhere but in theology, would be offered freely to every 
petitioner. 

Wherefore it is clear that “believeth,” in the Scriptures, 
means something entirely different from what it does in any 
secular'book, and must include contrition, confession, pen¬ 
ance, satisfaction, mortification of the flesh, and all else 
necessary to salvation. 

Shall I venture to send this end of Eva’s sentence to her? 

It might mislead her. Dare I for her sake? dare I still 
more for my own? 

One hour I have sat before this question; and whither 
has my heart wandered? What confession can retrace the 
flood of bitter thoughts which have rushed over me in this 
one hour? 

I had watched her grow from childhood into early 
womanhood; and until these last months, until that week 
of anguish, I had thought of her as a creature between a 
child and an angel. I had loved her as a sister who had yet 
a mystery and a charm about her different from a sister. 
Only when it seemed that death might separate us did it 
burst upon me that there was something in my affection 
for her which made her not one among others, but in some 
strange, sacred sense the only one on earth to me. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


91 


And as I recovered came the hopes I must never more 
recall, which made all life like the woods in spring, and my 
heart like a full river set free from its ice-fetters, and rush¬ 
ing through the world in a tide of blessing. 

I thought of a home which might be, I thought of a 
sacrament which should transubstantiate all life into a 
symbol of heaven, a home which was to be peaceful and 
sacred as a church, because of the meek, and pure, and 
heavenly creature who should minister there. 

And then came to me that terrible vision of a city smitten 
by the pestilence, whence I had brought the recollection of 
the impulse I had had in the forest at midnight, and more 
than once since then, to take the monastic vows. I felt I 
was like Jonah flying from God; yet still I hesitated until she 
was stricken. And then I yielded. I vowed if she were 
saved I would become a monk. 

Not till she was stricken, whose loss would have made 
the whole world a blank to me—not till the sacrifice was 
worthless—did I make it. And will God accept such a 
sacrifice as this? 

At least Brother Martin had not this to reproach himself 
with. He did not delay his conversion until his whole 
being had become possessed by an image no prayers can 
erase; nay, which prayer and holy meditations, or heaven 
itself, only rivet on the heart, as the purest reflection of 
heaven memory can recall. 

Brother Martin, at least, did not trifle with his vocation 
until too late. 


PART VII. 
else’s story. 


January 23. 

It is too plain now why Fritz would not look back as he 
went down the street. He thought it would be looking 
back from the kingdom of God. 

The kingdom of God, then, is the cloister, and the 
world, we are that—father, mother, brother, sisters, friends, 
home, that is the world. I shall never understand it. For 
if all my younger brothers say is true, either all the priests 


c 



92 


TEE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


and monks are not in the kingdom of God, or the kingdom 
of God is strangely governed here on earth. 

Fritz was helping us all so much. He would have been the 
stay of our parents’ old age. He was the example and ad¬ 
miration of the boys, and the pride and delight of us all; 
and to me! My heart grows so bitter when I write about 
it, I seem to hate and reproach every one. Every one but 
Fritz; I cannot, of course, hate him. But why was all 
that was gentlest and noblest in him made to work toward 
this last dreadful step? 

If our father had only been more successful Fritz need 
not have entered on that monastic foundation at Erfurt, 
which made his conscience so sensitive; if my mother had 
only not been so religious, and taught us to reverence 
Aunt Agnes as so much better than herself, he might never 
have thought of the monastic life; if I had been more re¬ 
ligious he might have confided more in me, and I might 
have induced him to pause, at least a few years, before tak¬ 
ing this unalterable step. If Eva had not been so willful, 
and insisted on braving the contagion from me, she might 
never have been stricken, and that vow might not yet, 
might never have been taken. If God had not caused him 
so innocently to bring the pestilence among us! But I 
must not dare to say another word of complaint, or it will 
become blasphemy. Doubtless it is God who has willed to 
bring all this misery on us, and to rebel against God is a 
deadly sin. As Aunt Agnes said, “ The Lord is a jealous 
God,” he will not sutler us to make idols. We must love 
him best, first, alone. We must make a great void in our 
heart, by renouncing all earthly affections, that he may fill 
it.. We must mortify the flesh, that we may live. What 
then is the flesh? 1 suppose all our natural affections, 
which the monks call our fleshly lusts. These Fritz has 
renounced. Then if all our natural affections are to die in 
us, what is to live in us? The “spiritual life,” they say in 
some of the sermons, and the love of God. But are not my 
natural affections my heart; and if I am not to love God 
with my heart, with the heart with which I love my father 
and mother, what am I to love him with? 

It seems to me, the love of God to us is something quite 
different from any human being’s love to us. 

When human beings love us they like to have us with 
them; they delight to make us happy; they delight in our 
being happy, whether they make us so or not, if it is a 
right happiness, a happiness that does us good. 


THE SGHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


93 


But with God’s love it must be quite different. He 
warns us not on any account to come too near him. We 
have to place priests, and saints, and penances between us 
and him, and then approach him with the greatest caution, 
lest, after all, it should be in the wrong way, and he should 
be angry. And instead of delighting in our happiness, he 
is never so much pleased as when we renounce all the happi¬ 
ness of our life, and make other people wretched in doing 
so, as Fritz, our own Fritz, has just done. 

Therefore, also, no doubt, the love God requires we 
should feel for him is something entirely different from the 
love we give each other. It must, I suppose, be a serious, 
severe, calm adoration, too sublime to give either joy or 
sorrow, such as has left its stamp on Aunt Agnes’ grave, 
impassive face. I can never, never even attempt to attain 
to it. Certainly at present I have no time to think of it. 

Thank heaven, thou lovest still, mother of mercy; in thy 
face there have been tears, real, bitter, human tears; in 
thine eyes there have been smiles of joy, real, simple, 
human joy. Thou wilt understand and have pity. Yet, 
oh, couldst not thou, even thou, sweet mother, have re¬ 
minded him of the mother he has left to battle on alone? 
thou who art a mother, and didst bend over a cradle, and 
hadst a little lowly home at Nazareth once? 

But I know my own mother would not even herself have 
uttered a word to keep Fritz back. When first we heard 
of it, and I entreated her to write and remonstrate, 
although the tears were streaming from her eyes, she said, 
“Not a word, Else, not a syllable. Shall not I give him 
up freely to Him who gave him to me. God might fiave 
called him away from earth altogether when he lay smitten 
with the plague, and shall I grudge him to the cloister? I 
shall see him again,” she added, “once or twice at least. 
When he is consecrated priest, shall I not have joy then, 
and see him in his white robes at the altar, and, perhaps, 
even receive my Creator from his hands.” 

“Once or twice! oh mother!” I sobbed, and in church, 
among hundreds of others. “What pleasure will there 
be in that?” 

“Else,” she said softly, but with a firmness unusual with 
her, “my child, do not say another word. Once I myself 
had some faint inclination to the cloister, which, if I had 
nourished it, might have grown into a vocation. But I saw 


94 


THE 8CH0NBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


your father, and I neglected it. And see what troubles my 
children have had to bear! Has there not also been a kind 
of fatal spell on all your father’s inventions? Perhaps God 
will at last accept from me in my son what I withheld in 
myself, and will be pacified toward us, and send us better 
days; and then your father’s great invention will be com¬ 
pleted yet. But do not say anything of what I told you 
to him.” 

I have never seen our father so troubled about anything. 

“Just as he was able to understand my projects!” he 
said, “and I would have bequeathed them all to him!” 

For some days he never touched a model; but now he 
has crept back to his old folios and his instruments, and 
tells us there was something in Fritz’s horoscope which 
might have prepared us for this, had he only understood it 
a little before. However, this discovery, although too late 
to warn us of the blow, consoles our father, and he has re¬ 
sumed his usual occupations. 

Eva looks very pale and fragile, partly, no doubt, from 
the effects of the pestilence; but when first the rumor 
reached us, I sought some sympathy from her, and said, 
“Oh Eva, how strange it seems, when Fritz always thought 
of us before himself, to abandon us all thus without one 
word of warning.” 

“Cousin Else,” she said, “Fritz has done now as he 
always does. He has thought of us first, I am as sure of it 
as if I could hear him say so. He thought he would serve 
us best by leaving us thus, or he would never have left us.” 

She understood him best of all, as she so often does. 
When his letter came to our mother, it gave just the 
reasons she had often told me she was sure had moved him. 

It is difficult to tell what Eva feels, because of that 
strange inward peace in her which seems always to flow 
under all her other feelings. 

I have not seen her shed any tears at all; and while I can 
scarcely bear to enter our dear old lumber-room, or to do 
anything I did with him, her great delight seems to be to 
read every book he liked, and to learn and repeat every 
hymn she learned with him. 

Eva and the mother cling very closely together. She 
will scarcely let my mother do any household work, but in¬ 
sists on sharing every laborious task which hitherto we 
have kept her from, because of her slight and delicate 
frame. 


TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


95 


It is true I rise early to save them all the work I can, 
because they have neither of then} half the strength I have, 
and I enjoy stirring about. Thoughts come so much more 
bitterly on me when I am sitting still. 

But when I am kneading the dough, or pounding the 
clothes with stones in the stream on washing-days, I feel as 
I were pounding at all my perplexities, and that makes my 
hands stronger and my perplexities more shadowy, until 
even now I find myself often singing as I am wringing the 
clothes by the stream. It is so pleasant in the winter sun¬ 
shine, with the brook babbling among the rushes and 
cresses, and little Thekla prattling by my side, and pre¬ 
tending to help. 

But when I have finished my day’s work, and come into 
the house, I find the mother and Eva sitting close side by 
side; and perhaps Eva is silent, and my mother brushes 
tears away as they fall on her knitting; but when they look 
up, their faces are calm and peaceful, and then I know 
they have been talking about Eritz. 

Eisenach, February 2. 

Yesterday afternoon I found Eva translating a Latin 
hymn he loved to our mother, and then she sang it through 
in her sweet clear voice. It was about the dear, dear coun¬ 
try in heaven, and Jerusalem the Golden. 

In the evening I said to her: 

“Oh Eva, how can you bear to sing the hymns Eritz 
loved so dearly, and I could not sing a line steadily of any 
song he had cared to hear me sing? And he delighted 
always so much to listen to you. His voice would echo 
‘never, never more’ to every note I sung, and thy songs 
would all end in sobs.” 

“But I do not feel separated from Fritz, Cousin Else,” 
she said, “and I never shall. Instead of hearing that 
melancholy chant you think of, ‘never, never more,’ echo 
from all the hymns he loved, I always seem to hear his 
voice responding, ‘Forever and for evermore.’ And I think 
of the time when we shall sing them together again.” 

“Do you mean in heaven, Eva,” I said, “that is so very 
far off, and if we ever reach it-” 

“Not so very far off, Cousin Else,” she said. “I often 
think it is very near. If it were not so, how could the 
angels be so much with us and yet with God?” 


96 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“But life seems so long, now Fritz is gone.” 

“Not so very long, Cousin Else,” she said. “I often 
think it may be very short, and often I pray it may.” 

“Eva,” I exclaimed, “you surely don’t pray that you 
may die?” 

“Why not?” she said, very quietly. “I think if God 
took us to himself, we might help those we love better 
there than at Eisenach, or perhaps even in the convent. 
And it is there we shall meet again, and there are never 
any partings. My father told me so,” she added, “before 
he died.” 

Then I understood how Eva mourns for Fritz, and why 
she does not weep; but I could only say: 

“ Oh Eva, don’t pray to die. There are all the saints in 
heaven: and you help us so much more here. ” 


February 8. 

I cannot feel at all reconciled to losing Fritz, nor do I 
think I ever shall. Like all the other troubles, it was no 
doubt meant to do me good; but it does me none, I am 
sure, although, of course, that is my fault. What did me 
good was being happy, as I was when Fritz came back; and 
that is passed forever. 

My great comfort is our grandmother. The mother and 
Eva look on everything from such sublime heights; but my 
grandmother feels more as I do. Often, indeed, she speaks 
very severely of Fritz, which always does me good, because, 
of course, I defend him, and then she becomes angry, and 
says we are an incomprehensible family, and have the 
strangest ideas of right and wrong, from my father down¬ 
ward, she ever heard of; and then I grow angry, and say 
my father is the best and wisest man in the electoral states. 
Then our grandmother begins to lament over her poor, dear 
daughter, and the life she has led, and rejoices, in a plain¬ 
tive voice, that she herself has nearly done with the world 
altogether; and then I try to comfort her, and say that I 
am sure there is not much in the world to make any one 
wish to stay in it; and having reached this point of de¬ 
spondency, we both cry and embrace each other, and she 
says I am a poor, good child, and Fritz was always the 
delight of her heart, which I know very well; and thus we 
comfort each other. We have, moreover, solemnly resolved, 


THE SCRONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 97 

our grandmother and I, that, whatever comes of it, we will 
never call Fritz anything but Fritz. 

Brother Sebastian, indeed!” she said; “your mother 
might as well take a new husband as your brother a new 
name! Was not she married, and was not he christened in 
church? Is not Friedrich a good, honest name, which 
hundreds of your ancestors have borne? And shall we call 
him instead a heathen, foreign name, that none of your 
kindred were ever known by?” 

“Not heathen, grandmother,” I venture to suggest. 
“You remember telling us of the martyrdom of St. Sebas¬ 
tian by the heathen emperor?” 

“Do you contradict me, child?” she exclaimed. “Did I 
not know the whole martyrology before your mother was 
born? I say it is a heathen name. No blame to the saint 
if his parents were poor benighted pagans, and knew no 
better name to give him: but that our Fritz should adopt 
it instead of his own is a disgrace. My lips at least are too 
old to learn such new-fashioned nonsense. I shall call him 
the name I called him at the font and in his cradle, and no 
other.” 

Yes, Fritz; Fritz he is to us, and shall be always. Fritz 
in our hearts till death. 


February 15. 

We have just heard that Fritz has finished his first 
month of probation, and has been invested with the frock 
of the novice. I hate to think of his thick, dark, waving 
hair clipped in the circle of the tonsure. But the worst 
part of it is the effect of his becoming a monk has had on 
the other boys, Christopher and Pollux. 

They, who before this thought Fritz the model of every¬ 
thing good and great, seem repelled from all religion now. 
I have difficulty even in getting them to church. 

Christopher said to me the other day: 

“Else, why is a man who suddenly deserts his family to 
become a soldier called a villain, while the man who deserts 
those who depend on him to become a monk is called a 
saint?” 

It is very unfortunate the boys should come to me with 
their religious perplexities, because I am so perplexed my¬ 
self, I have no idea how to answer them. I generally 
advise them to ask Eva. 


98 


THE SGEONBERO-GOTTA FAMIL Y. 


This time I could only say, as our grandmother had so 
often said to me: 

“You must wait till you are older, and then you will 
understand.” But I added, “Of course it is quite differ¬ 
ent: one leaves his home for God, and the other for the 
world.” 

But' Christopher is the worst, and he continued: 

“ Sister Else, I don’t like the monks at all. You and 
Eva and our mother have no idea how wicked many of 
them are. Reinhardt says he has seen them drunk often, 
and heard them swear, and that some of them made a jest 
even of the mass, and the priests’ houses are not fit for any 
honest maiden to visit, and-” 

“Reinhardt is a bad boy,” I said, coloring; “and I have 
often told you I don’t want to hear anything he says.” 

“But I, at all events, shall never become a monk or a 
priest,” retorted Christopher; “I think the merchants are 
better. Women cannot understand about these things,” 
he added, loftily, “and it is better they should not; but I 
know; and I intend to be a merchant or a soldier.” 

Christopher and Pollux are fifteen, and Fritz is two-and- 
twenty; but lie never talked in that lofty way to me about 
women not understanding! 

It did make me indignant to hear Christopher, who is 
always tearing his clothes, and getting into scrapes, and 
perplexing us to get him out of them, comparing himself 
with Fritz, and looking down on his sisters; and I said, 
“It is only boys who talk scornfully of women. Men, true 
men, honor women.” 

“The monks do not,” retorted Christopher. “I have 
heard them say things myself worse than I have ever said 
about any woman. Only last Sunday, did not Father 
Boniface say half the mischief in the world had been done 
nearly all by women, from Eve to Helen and Cleopatra?” 

“Do not mention our mother Eve with those heathens s 
Christopher,* said our grandmother, coming to my rescue, 
from her corner by the stove. “Eve is in the holy Scrip¬ 
tures, and many of these pagans are not fit for people to 
speak of. Half the saints are women, you know very well. 
Peasants and traders,” she added sublimely, “may talk 
slightingly of women; but no man can be a true knight 
who does.” 

“Tue monks do,” muttered Christopher, doggedly. 


THE SCHONBERG-C0TTA FAMILY. 


99 


“I have nothing to say about the monks,” rejoined our 
grandmother tartly. And accepting this imprudent con¬ 
cession of our grandmother’s, Christopher retired from the 
contest. 

March 25. 

I have just been looking at two letters addressed to 
Father Johann Braun, one of our Eisenach priests, by 
Martin Luther. They were addressed to him as the holy 
and venerable priest of Christ and of Mary. So much I 
could understand, and also that he calls himself Brother 
Martin Luther, not Brother Augustine, a name he assumed 
on first entering the cloister. Therefore certainly 1 may 
call our Fritz, Brother Friedrich Cotta. 

March 29, 1510. 

A young man was at Aunt Ursula Cotta’s this evening, 
who told us strange things about the doings at Annaberg. 

Dr. Tetzel has been there two years, selling the papal 
indulgences to the people; and lately, out of regard, he 
says, to the great piety of the German people, he has re¬ 
duced their price. 

There was a great deal of discussion about it, which I 
rather regretted the boys were present to hear. My father 
said indulgences did not mean forgiveness of sins, but only 
remission of certain penances which the church had im¬ 
posed. But the young man from Annaberg told us that 
Dr. John Tetzel solemnly assured the people, that since it 
was impossible for them, on account of their sins, to make 
satisfaction to God by their works, our holy father the 
pope, who has the control of all the treasury of merits ac¬ 
cumulated by the church throughout the ages, now 
graciously sells those merits to any who will buy, and 
thereby bestows on them forgiveness of sins (even of sins 
which no other priest can absolve), and a certain entrance 
into eternal life. 

The yourg man said, also, that the great red cross has 
been erected in the nave of the principal church, with the 
crown of thorns, the nails, and spear suspended from it, 
and that at times it has been granted to the pope even so 
to see the blood of the crucified flow from the cross. Be¬ 
neath this cross are the banners of the church, and the 
papal standard, with the triple crown. Before it is the 


L. of C. 


100 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


large, strong iron money chest. On one side stands the 
pulpit, where Dr. Tetzel preaches daily, and exhorts 
the people to purchase this inestimable favor while yet 
there is time, for themselves and their relations in purga¬ 
tory—and translates the long parchment mandate of the 
lord pope, with the papal seals hanging from it. On the 
other side is a table, where sit several priests, with pen, 
ink, and writing-desks, selling the indulgence tickets, and 
counting the money into boxes. Lately, he told us, not 
only have the prices been reduced, but at the end of the 
letter affixed to the churches, it is added, “ Pauperibus 
dentur gratis .” 

“Freely to the poor!” That certainly would suit us! 
And if I had only time to make a pilgrimage to Annaberg, 
if this is the kind of religion that pleases God, it certainly 
might be attainable even for me. 

If Fritz had only known it before, he need not have 
made that miserable vow. A journey to Annaberg would 
have more than answered the purpose. 

Only, if the pope has such inestimable treasures at his 
disposal, why could he not always give them freely to the 
poor, always and everywhere? 

But I know it is a sin to question what the lord pope 
does. I might almost as well question what the Lord God 
Almighty does. For he also, who gave those treasures to 
the pope, is he not everywhere, and could he not give them 
freely to us direct? It is plain these are questions too high 
for me. 

I am not the only one perplexed by those indulgences, 
however. My mother says it is not the way she was taught 
and she had rather keep to the old paths. Eva said, “If I 
were the lord pope, and had such a treasure, I think I 
could not help instantly leaving my palace and my beauti¬ 
ful Rome, and going over the mountains and over the seas, 
into every city and every village; every hut in the forests, 
and every room in the lowest streets, that none might miss 
the blessing, although I had to walk barefoot, and never 
saw holy Rome again.” 

“But then,” said our father, “the great church at St. 
Peter’s would never be built. It is on that, you know, 
the indulgence money is to be spent.” 

“But Jerusalem the Golden would be built, Uncle 
Cotta,” said Eva; “and would not that be better?” 


THE SCHONBEUO-COTTA FAMILY. 


101 


“We had better not talk about it, Eva,” said the mother. 
“The holy Jerusalem is being built; and I suppose there 
are many different ways to the same end. Only I like the 
way I know best.” 

The boys, I regret to say, had made many irreverent 
gestures during this conversation about the indulgences, 
and afterward I had to speak to them. 

“Sister Else,” said Christopher, “it is quite useless talk¬ 
ing to me. I hate the monks, and all belonging to them. 
And I don’t believe a word they say—at least, not because 
they say it. The boys at school say this Dr. Tetzel is 
a very bad man, and a great liar. Last week Reinhardt 
told us something he did, which will show you what he is. 
One day he promised to show the people a feather which 
the devil plucked out of the wing of the archangel Michael. 
Reinhardt says he supposes the devil gave it Dr. Tetzel. 
However that may be, during the night some students in 
jest found their way to his relic-box, stole the feather, and 
replaced it by some coals. The next day, when Dr. 
Tetzel had been preaching fervently for a long time on the 
wonders of this feather, when he opened the box there was 
nothing in it but charcoal. But he was not to be discon¬ 
certed. He merely said, ‘I have taken the wrong box of 
relics, I perceive; these are some most sacred cinders—the 
relics of the holy body of St. Laurence, who was roasted on 
a gridiron.’ ” 

“Schoolboys’ stories,” said I. 

“They are as good as monks’ stories, at all events,” re¬ 
joined Christopher. 

I resolved to see if Pollux was as deeply possessed with 
this irreverent spirit as Christopher, and therefore this 
morning, when I found him alone, I said, “Pollux, you 
used to love Fritz so dearly, you would not surely take up 
thoughts which would pain him so deeply if he knew of it.” 

“I do love Fritz,” Pollux replied, “but I can never think 
he was right in leaving us all; and I like the religion of 
the creeds and the ten commandments better than that of 
the monks.” 

Daily, hourly I feel the loss of Fritz. It is not half as 
much the money he earned; although, of course, that 
helped us—we can and do struggle on without that. It is 
the influence he had over the boys. They felt he was be¬ 
fore them in the same race; and when he remonstrated 


102 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


with them about anything, they listened. But if I blame 
them, they think it is only a woman’s ignorance, or a 
woman’s superstition—and boys cannot be like women. 
And now it is the same with Fritz. He is removed into 
another sphere, which is not theirs; and if I remind them 
of what he did or said, they say, “Yes, Fritz thought so; 
but you know he has become a monk; but we do not in¬ 
tend ever to be monks, and the religion of monks and lay¬ 
men are different things.” 


April 2. 

The sprihg is come again. I wonder if it sends the 
thrill of joy into Fritz’s cell at Erfurt that it does into all 
the forests around us here, and into my heart! 

I suppose there are trees near him, and birds—little, 
happy birds—making their nests among them, as they do 
in our yard, and singing as they work. 

But the birds are not monks. Their nests are little 
homes, and they wander freely whither they will, only 
brought back by love. Perhaps Fritz does not like to lis¬ 
ten to the birds now, because they remind him of home and 
our long spring days in the forest. Perhaps, too, they are 
part of the world he has renounced, and he must be dead 
to the world. 


April 3. 

We have had a long day in the forest, gathering sticks 
and dry twigs. Every creature seemed so happy there! It 
was such a holiday to watch the ants roofing" their nests 
with fir twigs, and the birds flying hither and thither with 
food for their nestlings; and to hear the wood-pigeons, 
which Fritz always said were like Eva, cooing softly in the 
depths of the forest. 

At midday we sat down in a clearing of the forest, to 
enjoy the meal we had brought with us. A little, quiet 
brook prattled near us, of which we drank, and the delicate 
young twigs on the topmost boughs of the dark, majestic 
pines trembled softly, as if for joy, in the breeze. 

As we rested, we told each other stories—Pollux, wild 
tales of demon hunts, which flew, with the baying of 
demon dogs, through these very forests at midnight. 
Then, as the children began to look fearfully around, and 
shiver, even at midday, while they listened, Christopher 


THE SCIIONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


103 


delighted them with quaint stories of wolves in sheep’s 
clothing politely offering themselves to the farmer as shep¬ 
herds, which, I suspect, were from “Reinecke Fuchs,” or 
some such dangerous book, but, without the application, 
were very amusing. 

Chriemhild and Atlantis had their stories of Kobolds, r who 
played strange tricks in the cow-stalls; and of Rubezahl 
and the misshapen dwarf gnomes, who guarded the treas¬ 
ures of gold and silver in the glittering caves under the 
mountains; and of the elves, who danced beside the 
brooks at twilight. 

“And I,” said loving little Thekla, “always want to see 
poor Nix, the water-sprite, who cries by the streams at 
moonlight, and lets his tears mix with the waters, because 
he has no soul, and he wants to live forever. I should like 
to give him half mine.” 

We should all of us have been afraid to speak of these 
creatures, in their own haunts among the pines, if the sun 
had not been high in the heavens. Even as it was, I began 
to feel a little uneasy, and I wished to turn the conversa¬ 
tion from these elves and sprites, who, many think, are the 
spirits of the old heathen gods, who linger about their 
haunts. One reason why people think so is, that they dare 
not venture within the sound of the church bells; which 
makes some, again, think they are worse than poor, 
shadowy, dethroned heathen gods, and had, indeed, better 
be never mentioned at all. I thought I could not do bet¬ 
ter than tell the legend of my beloved giant Offerus, who 
became Christopher and a saint by carrying the holy child 
across the river. 

Thekla wondered if her favorite Nix could be saved in 
the same way. She longed to see him and tell him about 
it. 

But Eva had still her story to tell, and she related to us 
her legend of St. Catherine. 

“St. Catherine,” she said, “was a lady of royal birth, 
the only child of the king and queen of Egypt. Her par¬ 
ents were heathens, but they died and' left her an orphan 
when she was only fourteen. She was more beautiful than 
any of the ladies of her court, and richer than any princess 
in the world, but she did not care for pomp, or dress, or 
all her precious things. God’s golden stars seemed to her 
more magnificent than all the splendor of her kingdom, 


104 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


and she shnt herself up in her palace, and studied philoso¬ 
phy and the stars until she grew wiser than all the wise 
men of the East. 

“ But one day the diet of Egypt met, and resolved that 
their young queen must be persuaded to marry. They sent 
a deputation to her in her palace, who asked her, if they 
could find a prince beautiful beyond any, surpassing all 
philosophers in wisdom, of noblest mind and richest inherit¬ 
ance, would she marry him? The queen replied, ‘He 
must be so noble that all men shall worship him, so great 
that I shall never think I have made him king, so rich that 
none shall ever say I enriched him, so beautiful that the 
angels of God shall desire to behold him. If ye can find 
such a prince, he shall be my husband and the lord of my 
heart.’ Now, near the queen’s palace there lived a poor 
old hermit in a cave, and that very night the holy mother 
of God appeared to him, and told him the king who should 
be lord of the queen’s heart was none other than her Son. 
Then the hermit went to the palace and presented the 
queen with a picture of the Virgin and Child; and when 
St. Catherine saw it her heart was so filled with its holy 
beauty that she forgot her books, her spheres, and the 
stars; Plato and Socrates became tedious to her as a twice- 
told tale, and she kept the sacred picture always before her. 
Then one night she had a dream: She met on the top of 
a high mountain a glorious company of angels, clothed in 
white, with chaplets of white lilies. She fell on her face 
before them, but they said, ‘Stand up, dear sister Cather¬ 
ine, and be right welcome.’ Then they led her by the 
hand to another company of angels more glorious still, 
clothed in purple with chaplets of red roses. Before these, 
again, she fell on her face, dazzled with their glory; but 
they said, ‘Stand up, dear sister Catherine; thee hath the 
king delighted to honor.’ Then they led her by the 
hand to an inner chamber of the palace of heaven, 
where sat a queen in state; and the angels said to her, 
‘Our most gracious sovereign lady, epipress of heaven, 
and mother of the King of Blessedness, be pleased that 
we present unto you this our sister, whose name is in 
the Book of Life, beseeching you to accept her as your 
daughter and handmaid.’ Then our blessed lady rose 
and smiled graciously, and led St. Catherine to her 
blessed Son; but he turned from her, and said sadly, ‘She 


THE SCIIONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


105 


is not fair enough for me.’ Then St. Catherine awoke, 
and in her heart all day echoed the words, ‘She is not fair 
enough for Mef and she rested not until she became a 
Christian and was baptized. And then, after some years, 
the tyrant Maximin put her to cruel tortures, and beheaded 
her, because she was a Christian. 

“But the angels took her body, and laid it in a white 
marble tomb on the top of Mount Sinai, and the Lord 
Jesus Christ received her soul, and welcomed her to heaven 
as his pure and spotless bride—for at last he had made her 
fair enough for him; and so she has lived ever since 
in heaven, and is the sister of the angels.” 

With Eva’s legend we began our work again; and in the 
evening, as we returned with our faggots, it was pleasant 
to see the goats creeping on before the long shadows which 
evening began to throw from the forests across the green 
valleys. 

The hymns which Eva sang seemed quite in tune with 
everything else. I did not want to understand the words; 
everything seemed singing in words I could not help feeling: 

“ God is good to us all. He gives twigs to the ants, and 
grain to the birds, and makes the trees their palaces and 
teaches them to sing; and will he not care for you?” 

Then the boys were so good. They never gave me a 
moment’s anxiety, not even Christopher, but collected fag¬ 
gots twice as large as ours in half the time, and then fin¬ 
ished ours, and then performed all kinds of feats in climb¬ 
ing trees and leaping brooks, and brought home countless 
treasures for Thekla. 

These are the days that always make me feel so much 
better, even a little religious, and as if I could almost love 
God. It is only when I come back again into the streets, 
under the shadow of the nine monasteries, and see the 
monks and priests in dark robes flitting silently about with 
downcast eyes, that I remember we are not like the birds 
or even the ants, for they have never sinned, and that, 
therefore, God cannot care for us and love us as he seems 
to do the least of his other creatures, until we have become 
holy and worked our way through that great wall of sin, 
which keeps us from him and shadows all our life. 

Eva does not feel this. As we returned she laid her 
basket down on the threshold of St. George’s church, and 
crossing herself with holy water, went softly up to the high 


106 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


altar, and there she knelt while the lamp burned before the 
Holy Sacrament. And when I looked at her face as she 
rose, it was beaming with joy. 

“Yon are happy, Eva, in the church and in the forest,” 
I said to her as we went home, “ you seem at home every¬ 
where.” 

“Is not God everywhere?” she said; “and has he not 
loved the world?” 

“But our sins!” I said. 

“Have we not the Saviour?” she said, bowing her head. 

“But think how hard people tind it to please him,” I 
said; “think of the pilgrimages, the penances, the indul¬ 
gences?” 

“I do not quite understand all that,” she said; “I only 
quite understand my sentence and the crucifix which tells 
us the Son of God died for man. That must have been 
from love, and I love him; and all the rest I am content to 
leave.” 

But to-night as I look at her dear childlike face asleep 
on the pillow, and see how thin the cheek is which those 
long lashes shade, and how transparent the little hand on 
which she rests, a 'cold fear comes over me lest God 
should even now be making her spirit “fair enough for 
him,” and so too fair for earth and for us. 


April 4. 

This afternoon I was quite cheered by seeing Christo¬ 
pher and Pollux bending together eagerly over a book, 
which they had placed before them on the window-sill. It 
reminded me of Fritz, and I went up to see what they were 
reading. 

I found, however, to my dismay it was no church-hook 
or learned Latin school-book; but, on the contrary, a Ger¬ 
man book full of woodcuts, which shocked me very much. 
It was called “ Beinecke Fuchs,” and as far as I could under¬ 
stand made a jest of everything. There were foxes with 
monks’ frocks, and even in cardinals’ hats, and wolves in 
cassocks with shaven crowns. Altogether it seemed to 
me a very profane and perilous book, but when I took it to 
our father, to my amazement he seemed as much amused 
with it as the boys, and said there were evils in the world 
which were better attacked by jests than by sermons. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


107 


April, St. Mark’s Day. 

I have just heard a sermon about despising the world, 
from a great preacher, one of the Dominican friars, who is 
going through the land to awaken people to religion. 

He spoke especially against money, which he called de¬ 
lusion, and dross, and worthless dust, and a soul-destroying 
canker. To monks no doubt it may be so. For what could 
they do with it? But it is not so to me. Yesterday 
money filled my heart with one of the purest joys I have 
ever known, and made me thank God as I hardly ever 
thanked him before. 

The time had come round to pay for some of the printing- 
materials, and we did not know where to turn for the sum 
we needed. Lately I have been employing my leisure 
hours in embroidering some fine Venetian silk Aunt Ursula 
gave me; and not having any copies, I had brought in some 
fresh leaves and flowers from the forest and tried to imitate 
them, hoping to sell them. 

When I had finished, it was thought pretty and I carried 
it to the merchant who took the father’s precious unfin¬ 
ished clock. 

He has always been kind to us since, and has procured us 
ink and paper at a cheaper rate than others can buy it. 

When I showed him my work he seemed surprised, and 
instead of showing it to his wife, as I had expected, he said 
smiling: 

“These things are not for poor honest burghers like me. 
You know my wife might be fined by the sumptuary laws 
if she aped the nobility by wearing anything so fine as this. 
I am going to the Wartburg to speak about a commission I 
have executed for the Elector Frederick, and if you like I 
will take you and your embroidery with me.” 

I felt dismayed at first at such an idea, but I had on the 
new dress Fritz gave me a year ago, and I resolved to 
venture. 

It was so many years since I had passed through that 
massive gateway into the great courtyard; and I thought 
of St. Elizabeth distributing loaves, perhaps, at that very 
gate, and entreated her to make the elector or the ladies of 
his court propitious to me. 

I was left standing, what seemed to me a long time, in 
an anteroom. Some very gayly dressed gentlemen and 
ladies passed me and looked at me rather scornfully. I 


108 


THE SGHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


thought the courtiers were not mnch improved since the 
days when they were so rude to St. Elizabeth. 

But at last I was summoned into the elector’s presence. 
I trembled very much, for I thought: If the servants are 
so haughty, what will the master be? But he smiled on 
me quite kindly, and said, “My good child, I like this 
work of thine; and this merchant tells me thou art a duti¬ 
ful daughter. I will purchase this at once for one of my 
sisters, and pay thee at once!” 

I was so surprised and delighted with his kindness that 
I cannot remember the exact words of what he said after¬ 
ward, but the substance of them was that the elector is 
building a new church at his new university town of 
Wittenberg, which is to have choicer relics than any 
church in Germany. And I am engaged to embroider 
altar-cloths and coverings for the reliquaries. And the 
sum already paid me nearly covers our present debt. 

No! whatever that Dominican preacher might say, noth¬ 
ing would ever persuade me that these precious guldens, 
which I took home yesterday evening with a heart brim¬ 
ming over with joy and thankfulness, which made our 
father clasp his hands in thanksgiving, and our mother’s 
eyes overflow with happy tears is delusion, or dross, or 
dust. 

Is it not what we make it? Dust in the miser’s chests; 
canker in the proud man’s heart; but golden sunbeams, 
streams of blessing earned by a child’s labor and comforting 
a parent’s heart, or lovingly poured from rich men’s hands 
into poor men’s homes. 


April 20. 

Better days seem dawning at last. Dr. Martin, who 
preaches now at the elector’s new University of Witten¬ 
berg, must, we think, have spoken to the elector for us, 
and our father is appointed to superintend the printing- 
press especially for Latin books, which is to be set up there. 

And sweeter even than this, it is from Fritz that this 
boon comes to us. Fritz, dear unselfish Fritz, is the bene¬ 
factor of the family after all. It was he who asked Dr. 
Martin Luther to speak for us. There, in his lonely cell 
at Erfurt, he thinks then of us! And he prays for us. 
He will never forget us. His new name will not alter his 
heart. And, perhaps, one day when the novitiate is over, 


THE SCBONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


109 


we may see him again. But to see him as no more onr 
Fritz, but Brother Sebastian—his home, the Augustinian 
cloister—his mother, the church—his sisters, all holy 
women—would it not be almost worse than not seeing him 
at all? 

We are all to move to Wittenberg in a month, except 
Pollux, who is to remain with Cousin Conrad Cotta, to 
learn to be a merchant. 

Christopher begins to help about the printing. 

There was another thing also in my visit to the Wart- 
burg, which gives me many a gleam of joy when I think of 
it. If the elector, whose presence I so trembled to enter, 
proved so much more condescending and accessible than his 
courtiers—oh, if it could only be possible that we are mak¬ 
ing some mistake about God, and that he after all may be 
more gracious and ready to listen to us than his priests, or 
even than the saints who wait on him in his palace in 
heaven! 


PART VIII. 
fritz’s story. 

Erfurt, Augustinian Convent, April 1. 

I suppose conflict of mind, working on a constitution 
weakened by the plague, brought on the illness from which 
I am just recovering. It is good to feel strength returning 
as I do. There is a kind of natural, irresistible delight in 
life, however little we have to live for, especially to one so 
little prepared to die as I am. As I write, the rooks are 
cawing in the churchyard elms, disputing and chattering 
like a set of busy prosaic burghers. But retired from all 
this noisy public life, two thrushes have built their nest in 
a thorn just under the window of my cell. And early in 
the morning they wake me with song. One flies hither 
and thither as busy as a bee, with food for his mate, as she 
broods secure among the thick leaves, and then he perches 
on a twig, and sings as if he had nothing to do but to be 
happy. All is pleasure to him, no doubt—the work as well 
as the singing. Happy the creatures for whom it is God’s 
will that they should live according to their nature, and 
not contrary to it. 

Probably in the recovering from illness, when the body is 



110 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


still weak, yet thrilling with reviving strength, the heart is 
especially tender, and yearns more toward home and former 
life than it will when strength returns and brings duties. 
Or, perhaps, this illness recalls the last—and the loving 
faces and soft, hushed voices that were around me then. 

Yet I have nothing to complain of. My aged confessor 
has scarcely left my bedside. From the first he brought 
his bed into my cell, and watched over me like a father. 

And his words minister to my heart as much as his hands 
to my bodily wants. 

If my spirit would only take the comfort he offers, as 
easily as I receive food and medicine from his hands! 

He does not attempt to combat my difficulties one by one. 
He says: 

“ I am little of a physician. I cannot lay my hand on 
the seat of disease. But there is One who can.” And to 
him I know the simple-hearted old man prays for me. 

Often he recurs to the declaration in the creed, “I be¬ 
lieve in the forgiveness of sins.” “It is the command of 
God,” he said to me one day, “that we should believe in 
the forgiveness of sins, not of David’s or Peter’s sins but of 
ours, our own, the very sins that distress our consciences.” 
He also quoted a sermon of St. Bernard’s on the annunci¬ 
ation. 

“ The testimony of the Holy Ghost given in thy heart is 
this, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee.’ ” 

Yes, forgiven to all penitents! But who can assure me 
I am a true penitent? 

These words, he told me, comforted Brother Martin and 
he wonders they do not comfort me. I suppose Brother 
Martin had the testimony of the Holy Ghost in his heart; 
but who shall give that to me? to me who resisted the 
vocation of the Holy Ghost so long; who in my deepest 
heart obey it so imperfectly still! 

Brother Martin was faithful, honest, thorough, single- 
hearted—all that God accepts; all that I am not. 

The affection and compassion of my aged confessor often, 
however, comfort me, even when his words have little 
power. They make me feel a dim hope now and then that 
the Lord he serves may have something of the same pity in 
his heart. 


TEE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Ill 


Erfurt, April 15. 

The Vicar-General, Stanpitz, has visited our convent. I 
have confessed to him. He was very gentle to me, and to 
my surprise prescribed me scarcely any penance, although 
I endeavored to unveil all to him. 

Once he murmured, as if to himself, looking at me with 
a penetrating compassion, “Yes, there is no drawing back. 
But I wish I had known this before.” And then he added 
to me, “Brother, we must not confuse suffering with sin. 
It is sin to turn back. It may be anguish to look back and 
see what we have renounced, but it is not necessarily sin, 
if we resolutely press forward still. And if sin mingles 
with the regret, remember we have to do not with a 
painted, but a real Saviour; and he died not for painted, 
but for real sins. Sin is never overcome by looking at it, 
but by looking away from it to him who bore our sins, 
yours and mine, on the cross. The heart is never won back 
to God by thinking we ought to love him, but by learning 
what he is, all worthy of our love. True repentance begins 
with the love of God. The Holy Spirit teaches us to know, 
and, therefore, to love God. Fear not, but read the 
Scriptures, and pray. He will employ thee in his service 
yet, and in his favor is life, and in his service is freedom.” 

This confession gave me great comfort for the time. I 
felt myself understood, and yet not despaired of, And 
that evening, after repeating the hours, I ventured in my 
own words to pray to God, and found it solemn and sweet. 

But since then my old fear has recurred. Did I indeed 
confess completely even to the vicar-general? If I had, 
would not his verdict have been different? Does not the very 
mildness of his judgment prove that I have once more de¬ 
ceived myself—made a false confession, and, therefore, 
failed of the absolution? But it is a relief to have his 
positive command as my superior to study the holy Scrip¬ 
tures, instead of the scholastic theologians, to whose writings 
my preceptor had lately been exclusively directing my 
studies. 


April 25. 

I have this day, to my surprise, received a command, 
issuing from the vicar-general, to prepare to set off on a 
mission to Borne. 


112 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


The monk under whose direction I am to journey I do 
not yet know. 

The thought of the new scenes we shall pass through, 
and the wonderful new world we shall enter on, new and 
old, fills me with an almost childish delight. Since I heard 
it, my heart and conscience seem to have become strangely 
lightened, which proves, I fear, how little real earnestness 
there is in me. 

Another thing, however, has comforted me greatly. In 
the course of my confession I spoke to the vicar-general 
about my family, and he has procured for my father an ap¬ 
pointment as superintendent of the Latin printing press, at 
the elector’s new University of Wittenberg. 

I trust now that the heavy pressure of pecuniary care 
which has weighed so long on my mother and Else will be 
relieved. It would have been sweeter to me to have earned 
this relief for them by my own exertions. But we must 
not choose the shape or the time in which divine messen¬ 
gers shall appear. 

The vicar-general has, moreover, presented me with a 
little volume of sermons by a pious Dominican friar, named 
Tauler. These are wonderfully deep and heart-searching. 
I find it difficult to reconcile the sublime and enrapt devo¬ 
tion to God which inspires them with the minute rules of 
our order, the details of scholastic casuistry, and the precise 
directions as to the measure of worship and honor, Dulia, 
Hyperdulia, and Latria to be paid to the various orders of 
heavenly beings, which make prayer often seem as perplex¬ 
ing to me as the ceremonial of the imperial court would to 
a peasant of the Thuringian forest. 

This Dominican speaks as if we might soar above all these 
lower things, and lose ourselves in the one ineffable source, 
ground, beginning, and end of all being; the One who is 
all. 

Dearer to me, however, than this, is an old manuscript 
in our convent library, containing the confessions of the 
patron of our order himself, the great Father Augustine. 

Straight from his heart it penetrates into mine, as if 
spoken to me to-day. Passionate, fervent, struggling, 
wanderiug, trembling, adoring heart, I feel its pulses 
through every line! 

And was this the experience of one who is now a saint on 
the most glorious heights of heaven? 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


113 


Then the mother! Patient, lowly, noble, saintly Mon¬ 
ica; mother, and more than martyr. She rises before mo 
in the likeness of a beloved form 1 may remember without 
sin, even here, even now. St. Monica speaks to me with 
my mother’s voice; and in the narrative of her prayers I 
seem to gain a deeper insight into what my mother’s have 
been for me. 

St. Augustine was happy, to breathe the last words of 
comfort to her himself as he did, to be with her, dwelling 
in one house to the last. This can scarcely be given to me. 
“That sweet, dear habit of living together” is broken for¬ 
ever between us; broken by my deliberate act. “For the 
glory of God;” may God accept it; if not, may he forgive. 

That old manuscript is worn with reading. It has lain 
in the convent library for certainly more than a hundred 
years. Generation after generation of those who now lie 
sleeping in the field of God below our windows have turned 
over those pages. Heart after heart has doubtless come, as 
I came, to consult the oracle of that deep heart of old 
times, so nearly shipwrecked, so gloriously saved. 

As I read the old thumbed volume, a company of spirits 
seem to breathe in fellowship around me, and I think how 
many, strengthened by these words, are perhaps even now, 
like him who panned them, among the spirits of the just 
made perfect. 

In the convent library, the dead seem to live again 
around me. In the cemetery are the relics of the corrupt¬ 
ible body. Among these worn volumes I feel the breath of 
the living spirits of generations passed away. 

I must say, however, there is more opportunity for soli¬ 
tary communion with the departed in that library than I 
could wish. The books are not so much read, certainly, in 
these days, as the vicar-general would desire, although the 
Augustinian has the reputation of being among the more 
learned orders. 

I often question what brought many of these easy, com¬ 
fortable monks here. But many of the faces give no reply 
to my search. No history seems written on them. The 
wrinkles seem mere ruts of the wheels of time, not furrows 
sown with the seeds of thought—happy at least if they are 
not as fissures rent by the convulsions of inward fires. 

I suppose many of the brethren became monks just as 
other \ien become tailors or shoemakers, and with no 


114 


THE SGHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


further spiritual aim, because their parents planned it so. 
But I may wrong even the meanest in saying so. The 
shallowest human heart has depths somewhere, let them be 
crusted over by ice ever so thick, or veiled by flowers ever 
so fair. 

And I—I and this unknown brother are actually about 
to journey to Italy, the glorious land of sunshine and vines, 
and olives, and ancient cities—the land of Rome, imperial, 
saintly Rome, where countless martyrs sleep, where St. 
Augustine and Monica sojourned; where St. Paul and St. 
Peter preached and suffered—where the vicar of Christ 
lives and reigns. 


May 1. 

The brother with whom I am to make the pilgrimage to 
Rome arrived last night. To my inexpressible delight it is 
none other than Brother Martin—Martin Luther—profes¬ 
sor of theology in the elector’s new University of Witten¬ 
berg. He is much changed again since I saw him last toil¬ 
ing through the streets of Erfurt with the sack on his 
shoulder. The hollow, worn look has disappeared from 
his face, and the fire has come back to his eyes. Their 
expression varies, indeed, often from the sparkle of merri¬ 
ment to a grave earnestness, when all their light seems 
withdrawn inward; but underneath there is that kind of 
repose I have noticed in the countenance of my aged 
confessor. 

Brother Martin’s face has, indeed, a history written on 
it, and a history, I deem, not yet finished. 

Heidelberg, May 25. 

I wondered at the lightness of heart with which I set 
out on our journey from Erfurt. 

The vicar-general himself accompanied us hither. We 
traveled partly on horseback, and partly in wheeled 
carriages. 

The conversation turned much on the prospects of the 
new university, and the importance of finding good profes¬ 
sors of the ancient languages for it. Brother Martin him¬ 
self proposed to make use of bis sojourn at Rome, to 
improve himself in Greek and Hebrew, by studying under 
the learned Greeks and rabbis there. They counsel me also 
to do the same. 


THE SGHOHB ERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


115 


The business which calls ns to Rome is an appeal to the 
holy father, concerning a dispute between some convents 
of our order and the vicar-general. 

But they say business is slowly conducted at Rome, and 
will leave us much time for other occupations, besides 
those which are most on our hearts, namely, paying hom¬ 
age at the tombs of the holy apostles and martyrs. 

They speak most respectfully and cordially of the Elec¬ 
tor Frederic, who must indeed be a very devout prince. 
Not many years since he accomplished a pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem, and took with him the painter Lucas Cranach, 
to make drawings of the various holy places. 

About ten years since, he built a church dedicated to St. 
Ursula, on the site of the small chapel erected in 1353, over 
the holy thorn from the crown of thorns, presented to a 
fomer elector by the king of France. 

This church is already, they say, through the Elector 
Frederic’s diligence, richer in relics than any church in 
Europe, except that of Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis. 
And the collection is still continually being increased. 

They showed me a book printed at Wittenberg a year or 
two since, entitled “A Description of the Venerable 
Relics,” adorned with one hundred and nineteen woodcuts. 

The town itself seems to be still poor and mean compared 
with Eisnach and Erfurt;, and the students, of whom there 
are now nearly five hundred, are at times very turbulent. 
There is much beer-drinking among them. In 1507, three 
years since, the bishop of Brandenburg laid the whole city 
under interdict for some insult offered by the students to 
his suite, and now they are forbidden to wear guns, swords, 
or knives. 

Brother Martin, however, is full of hope as to the good 
to be done among them. He himself received the degree 
of Biblicus (Bible teacher) on the 9th of March last year; 
and every day he lectures between twelve and one o’clock. 

Last summer, for the first time, he was persuaded by the 
vicar-general to preach publicly. I heard some conversa¬ 
tion between them in reference to this, which afterward 
Brother Martin explained to me. 

Dr. Staupitz and Brother Martin were sitting last sum¬ 
mer in the convent garden at Wittenberg together, under 
the shade of a pear tree, while the vicar-general endeav¬ 
ored to prevail on him to preach. He was exceedingly 


116 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


unwilling to make the attempt. “It is no little matter,” 
said he to Dr. Staupitz, “to appear before the people in the 
place of God. I had fifteen arguments,” he continued in 
relating it, “wherewith I purposed to resist my vocation; 
hut they availed nothing. At the last I said, ‘Dr. Stau¬ 
pitz you will be the death of me, for I cannot live under it 
three months.’ ‘Very well,’ replied Dr. Staupitz, ‘still 
go on. Our Lord God hath many great things to accom¬ 
plish, and he has need of wise men in heaven as well as on 
earth. ’ ” 

Brother Martin could not further resist, and after mak¬ 
ing a trial before the brethren in the refectory, at last, with 
a trembling heart he mounted the pulpit of the little chapel 
of the Augustinian cloister. 

“When a preacher for the first time enters the pulpit,” 
he concluded, “no one would believe how fearful he is; he 
sees so many heads before him. When I go into the pulpit, 
I do not look on any one. I think them only to be so many 
blocks before me, and I speak out the words of my God.” 

And yet Dr. Staupitz says his words are like thunder¬ 
peals. Yet! do I say? Is it not because? He feels him¬ 
self nothing; he feels his message everything; he feels God 
present. What more could be needed to make a man of his 
power a great preacher? 

With such discourse the journey seemed accomplished 
quickly indeed. And yet, almost the happiest hours to me 
were those when we were all silent, and the new scenes 
passed rapidly before me. It was a great rest to live for a 
time on what I saw, and cease from thought, and remem¬ 
brance, and inward questionings altogether. For have I 
not been commanded this journey by my superiors, so that 
in accordance with my vow of obedience, my one duty at 
present is to travel; and therefore what pleasure it chances 
to bring I must not refuse. 

We spent some hours in Nuremberg. The quaint rich 
carvings of many of the houses were beautiful. There also 
we saw Albrecht Diirer’s paintings, and heard Hans Sachs, 
the shoemaker and poet, sing his godly German hymns. 
And as we crossed the Bavarian plains, the friendliness of 
the simple peasantry made up to us for the sameness of the 
country. 

Near Heidelberg again I fancied myself once more in the 
Tliuringian forest, especially as we rested in the convent of 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


117 


Erbach in the Odenwald. Again the familiar forests and 
green valleys with their streams were around me. I fear 
Else and the others will miss the beauty of the forest- 
covered hills around Eisenach, when they remove to Wit¬ 
tenberg, which is situated on a barren, monotonous flat. 
About this time they will be moving! 

Brother Martin has held many disputations on theolog¬ 
ical and philosophical questions in the University of Heidel¬ 
berg; but I, being only a novice, have been free to wander 
whither I would. 

This evening it was delightful to stand in the woods of 
the elector palatine’s castle, and from among the oaks and 
delicate bushes rustling about me, to look down on the hills 
of the Odenwald folding over each other. Far up among 
them I traced the narrow, quiet Neckar, issuing from the 
silent depths of the forest; while on the other side, below 
the city, it wound on through the plain to the Rhine, 
gleaming here and there with the gold of sunset or the cold 
gray light of the evening. Beyond, far olf, I could see the 
masts of ships on the Rhine. 

I scarcely know why the river made me think of life, of 
mine and Brother Martin’s. Already he has left the 
shadow of the forests. Who can say what people his life 
will bless, what sea it will reach, and through what perils? 
Of this I feel sure, it will matter much to many what its 
course shall be. For me it is otherwise. My life, as far as 
earth is concerned, seems closed—ended; and it can matter 
little to any, henceforth, through what regions it passes, if 
only it reaches the ocean at last, and ends, as they say, in 
the bosom of God. If only we could be sure that God 
guides the course of our lives as he does that of rivers. 
And yet, do they not say that some rivers even lose them¬ 
selves in sand-wastes, and others trickle meanly to the sea 
through lands they have desolated into untenantable 
marshes! 


Black Forest, May 14, 1510. 

Brother Martin and I are now fairly on our pilgrimage 
alone, walking all day, begging our provisions and our 
lodgings, which he sometimes repays with performing a 
mass in the parish church, or a promise of reciting certain 
prayers or celebrating masses on the behalf of our benefac¬ 
tors, at Rome> 


118 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


These are, indeed, precious days. My whole frame seems 
braced and revived by the early rising, "the constant move¬ 
ment in the pure air, the pressing forward to a definite 
point. 

But more, infinitely more than this, my heart seems re¬ 
viving. I begin to have a hope and see a light which, until 
now, I scarcely deemed possible. 

To encourage me in my perplexities and conflicts, 
Brother Martin unfolded to me what his own had been. 
To the storm of doubt, and fear, and anguish in that great 
heart of his, my troubles seem like a passing spring shower. 
Yet to me they were tempests which laid my heart waste. 
And God, Brother Martin believes, does not measure his 
pity by what our sorrows are in themselves, but what they 
are to us. Are we not all children in his sight? 

“I did not learn my divinity at once,” he said, “but was 
constrained by my temptations to search deeper and deeper; 
for no man without trials and temptations can attain a true 
understanding of the holy Scriptures. St. Paul had a devil 
that beat him with fists, and with temptations drove him 
diligently to study the holy Scriptures. Temptations 
hunted me into the Bible, wherein I sedulously read; and 
thereby, God be praised, at length attained a true under¬ 
standing of it.” 

He then related to me what some of these temptations 
were; the bitter disappointment it was to him to find that 
the cowl, and even the vows and the priestly consecration, 
made no change in his heart; that Satan was as near him 
in the cloister as outside, and he no stronger to cope with 
him. He told me of his endeavors to keep every minute 
rule of the order, and how the slightest deviation weighed 
on his conscience. It seems to have been like trying to re¬ 
strain a fire by a fence of willows, or to guide a mountain 
torrent in artificial windings through a flower-garden, to 
bind his fervent nature by these vexatious rules. He was 
continually becoming absorbed in some thought or study, 
and forgetting all the rules, and then painfully he would 
turn back and retrace his steps—sometimes spending weeks 
in absorbing study, and then remembering he had neglected 
his canonical hours, and depriving himself of sleep for 
nights to make up the missing prayers. 

He fasted, disciplined himself, humbled himself to per¬ 
form the meanest offices for the meanest brother; forcibly 


THE SCHON BERG-COTTA FAMILY. 119 

kept sleep from his eyes, wearied with study, and his mind 
worn out with conflict, until every now and then Nature 
avenged herself by laying him unconscious on the floor of 
his cell, or disabling him by a fit of illness. 

But all in vain; his temptations seemed to grow stronger, 
his strength less. Love to God he could not feel at all; 
but in his secret soul the bitterest questioning of God, who 
seemed to torment him at once by the law and the gospel. 
He thought of Christ as the severest judge, because the 
most righteous; and the very phrase, “the righteousness of 
God,” was torture to him. 

Not that this state of distress was continual with him. 
At times he gloried in his obedience, and felt that he earned 
rewards from God by performing the sacrifice of the mass, 
not only for himself, but for others. At times, also, in his 
circuits, after his consecration, to say mass in the villages 
around Erfurt, he would feel his spirits lightened by the 
variety of the scenes he witnessed, and would be greatly 
amused at the ridiculous mistakes of the village choirs; for 
instance, their chanting the “ Kyrie” to the music of the 
“ Gloria.” 

Then, at other times, his limbs would totter with terror 
when he offered the holy sacrifice, at the thought that he, 
the sacrificing priest, yet the poor, sinful Brother Martin, 
actually stood before God “without a mediator.” 

At his first mass he had difficulty in restraining himself 
from flying from the altar—so great was his awe and the 
sense of his unworthiness. Had he done so, he would have 
been excommunicated. 

Again, there were days when he performed the services 
with some satisfaction, and would conclude with saying, 
“Oh Lord Jesus, 1 come to thee, and entreat thee to be 
pleased with whatsoever I do and suffer in my order; and I 
pray thee that these burdens and this straitness of my rule 
and religion may be a full satisfaction for all my sins.” Yet 
then again, the dread would come that perhaps he had in¬ 
advertently omitted some word in the service, such as 
“ enim” or “ceternum” or neglected some prescribed genu¬ 
flection, or even a signing of the cross; and that thus, 
instead of offering to God an acceptable sacrifice in the 
mass, he had committed a grievous sin. 

From such terrors of conscience he fled for refuge to 
some of his twenty-one patron saints, or oftener to Mary, 


120 


TIIE sen ONE ERO-CO TTA FAMILY. 


seeking to touch her womanly heart, that she might appease 
her Son. He hoped that by invoking three saints daily, 
and by letting his body waste away with fastings and 
watchings, he should satisfy the law, and shield his con¬ 
science against the goad of the driver. But it all availed 
him nothing. The further he went on in this way, the 
more he was terrified. 

And then he related to me how the light broke upon his 
heart; slowly, intermittently, indeed; yet it has dawned on 
him. His day may often be dark and tempestuous; but it 
is day, and not night. 

Dr. Staupitz was the first who brought him any comfort. 
The vicar-general received his confession not long after he 
entered the cloister, and from that time won his confidence, 
and took the warmest interest in him. Brother Martin 
frequently wrote to him; and once he used the words, in 
reference to some neglect of the rules which troubled his 
conscience, “Oh, my sins, my sins!” Dr. Staupitz replied, 
“ You would be without sin, and yet you have no proper 
sins. Christ forgives true sins, such as parricide, blas¬ 
phemy, contempt of God, adultery, and sins like these. 
These are sins indeed. You must have a register in which 
stand veritable sins, if Christ is to help you. You would 
be a painted sinner, and have a painted Christ as a Saviour. 
You must make up your mind that Christ is a real Saviour, 
and you a real sinner.” 

These words brought some light to Brother Martin, but 
the darkness came back again and again: and tenderly did 
Dr. Staupitz sympathize with him and rouse him—Dr. 
Staupitz, and that dear, aged confessor, who ministered 
also so lovingly to me. 

Brother Martin’s great terror was the thought of the 
righteousness of God, by which he had been taught to 
understand his inflexible severity in executing judgment on 
sinners. 

Dr. Staupitz and the confessor explained to him that the 
righteousness of God is not against the sinner who believes 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, but for him—not against us to 
condemn, but for us to justify. 

He began to study the Bible with a new zest. He had 
had the greatest longing to understand rightly the Epistle of 
St. Paul to the Romans, but was always stopped by the word 
“ righteousness” in the first chapter and seventeenth verse, 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


121 


where Paul says the righteousness of God is revealed by the 
gospel. “I felt very angry,” he said, “at the term 'right¬ 
eousness of God;’ for, after the manner of all the teachers, 
I was taught to understand it in a philosophic sense, of 
that righteousness by which God is just and punisheth the 
guilty. Though I had lived without reproach, I felt my¬ 
self to be a great sinner before God, and was of a very 
quick conscience, and had not confidence in a reconciliation 
with God to be produced by any work or satisfaction or 
merit of my own. For this cause, I had in me no love of 
a righteous and angry God, but secretly hated him, and 
thought within myself, is it not enough that God has con¬ 
demned ns to everlasting death by Adam’s sin, and that we 
must suffer so much trouble and misery in this life? Over 
and above the terror and threatening of the law, must he 
needs increase by the gospel our misery and anguish, and, 
by the preaching of the same, thunder against us his justice 
and fierce wrath? My confused conscience ofttimes did 
cast me into fits of anger, and I sought day and night to 
make out the meaning of Paul; and at last I came to ap¬ 
prehend it thus: Through the gospel is revealed the right¬ 
eousness which availeth with God—a righteousness by 
which God, in his mercy and compassion, justifieth us; as 
it is written, ‘ The just shall live by faith.' 1 Straightway I 
felt as if I were born anew; it was as if I had found the 
door of paradise thrown wide open. Now I saw the Scrip¬ 
tures altogether in a new light—ran through their whole 
contents as far as my memory would serve, and compared 
them—and found that this righteousness was the more 
surely that by which he makes us righteous, because every¬ 
thing agreed thereunto so well. The expression, 'the 
righteousness of God,’ which I so much hated before, 
became now dear and precious—my darling and most com¬ 
forting word. That passage of Paul was to me the true 
door of paradise.” 

Brother Martin also told me of the peace the words, " I 
believe in the forgiveness of sins,” brought to him, as the 
aged confessor had previously narrated to me; for, he said, 
the devil often plucked him back, and, taking the very 
form of Christ, sought to terrify him again with his signs. 

As I listened to him, the conviction came on me that he 
had indeed drunk of the well-spring of everlasting life, and 
it seemed almost within my own reach; but I said: 


122 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“ Brother Martin, your sins were mere transgressions of 
human rules, but mine are different.” And I told him 
how I had resisted my vocation. He replied: 

“The devil gives heaven to people before they sin; but 
after they sin, brings their consciences into despair. Christ 
deals quite in the contrary way, for he gives heaven after 
sins committed, and makes troubled consciences joyful.” 

Then we fell into a long silence, and from time to time, 
as I looked at the calm which reigned on his rugged and 
massive brow, and felt the deep light in his dark eyes, the 
conviction gathered strength: 

“This solid thing on which that tempest-tossed spirit 
rests is Truth.” 

His lips moved now and then, as if in prayer, and his 
eyes were lifted up from time to time to heaven, as if his 
thoughts found a home there. 

After this silence, he spoke again, and said: 

“ The Gospel speaks nothing of our works or of the works 
of the law, but of the inestimable mercy and love of God 
toward most wretched and miserable sinners. Our most 
merciful Father, seejng us overwhelmed and oppressed with 
the curse of the law, and so to be holden under the same 
that we could never be delivered from it by our own power, 
sent his only Son into the world, and laid upon him the 
sins of all men, saying, ‘Be thou Peter, that denier; Paul, 
that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor; David, 
that adulterer; that sinner that did eat the apple in para¬ 
dise; that thief that hanged upon the cross; and 
briefly, be thou the person that hath committed the 
sins of all men, and pay and satisfy for them.’ For God 
trifleth not with us, but speaketh earnestly and of great 
love, that Christ is the Lamb of God who beareth the sins 
of us all. He is just, and the justifier of him that be- 
lieveth in Jesug.” 

I could answer nothing to this, but walked along ponder¬ 
ing these words. Neither did he say any more at that time. 

The sun was sinking low, and the long shadows of the 
pine trunks were thrown athwart our green forest path, so 
that we were glad to find a charcoal-burner’s hut, and to 
take shelter for the night beside his fires. 

But that night I could not sleep; and when all were 
sleeping around me, I rose and went out into the forest. 

Brother Martin is not a man to parade his inmost con- 


TEE SCEUNBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


123 


flicts before the eyes of others, to call forth their sympathy 
or their idle wonder. He has suffered too deeply and too 
recently for that. It is not lightly that he has unlocked 
the dungeons and torture-chambers of his past life for me. 
It is as a fellow-sufferer and a fellow-soldier, to show me 
how I also may escape and overcome. 

It is surely because he is to be a hero and a leader of men 
that God has caused him to tread these bitter ways alone. 

A new meaning dawns on old words for me. There is 
nothing new in what he says; but it seems new to me, as if 
God had spoken it first to-day; and all things seem made 
new in its light. 

God, then, is more earnest for me to be saved than I am 
to be saved. 

“He so loved the world, that he gave his Son.” 

He loved not saints, not penitents, not the religious, not 
Hiose who love him; but the world, secular men, profane 
men, hardened rebels, hopeless wanderers, and sinners. 

He gave not a promise, not an angel to teach us, not a 
world to ransom us, but his Son—his only-begotten. 

So much did God love the world, sinners, me! I believe 
this; I must believe this; I believe on him who says it. 
How can I then do otherwise than rejoice? 

Two glorious visions rise before me and fill the world and 
all my heart with joy. 

I see the holiest, the perfect, the Son made the victim, 
the lamb, the curse, willingly yielding himself up to death 
on the cross for me. 

I see the Father—inflexible in justice yet delighting in 
mercy—accepting him, the spotless -Lamb whom he had 
given; raising him from the dead; setting him on his right 
hand. Just, beyond all my terrified conscience could pic¬ 
ture him, he justifies me the sinner. 

Hating sin as love must abhor selfishness, and life death, 
and purity corruption, he loves me—the selfish, the corrupt, 
the dead in sins. He gives his Son, the only-begotten, for 
me; he accepts his Son, the spotless Lamb, for me; he for¬ 
gives me; he acquits me; he will make me pure. 

The thought overpowered me. I knelt among the pines 
and spoke to Him, who hears when we have no words, for 
words failed me altogether then. 

Munich, May 18. 

All the next day and the next that joy lasted. Every 


124 


TEE SCEONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


twig, and bird, and dew-drop spoke in parables to me; sang 
to me the parable of the son who had returned from the 
far country, and as he went toward his father’s house pre¬ 
pared his confession; but never finished the journey, for 
the father met him when he was yet a great way off; and 
never finished the confession, for the father stopped his 
self-reproaches with embraces. 

And on the father’s heart what child could say, “ Make 
me as one of thy hired servants?” 

I saw His love shining in every dew-drop on the grassy 
forest glades; I heard it in the song of every bird; I felt it 
in every pulse. 

I do not know that we spoke much during those days, 
Brother Martin and I. 

I have known something of love; but I have never felt a 
love that so fills, overwhelms, satisfies, as this love of God. 
And when first it is “thou and I” between God and the 
soul, for a time, at least, the heart has little room for other 
fellowship. 

But then came doubts and questionings. Whence came 
they? Brother Martin said from Satan. 

“The devil is a wretched, unhappy spirit,” said he, “and 
he loves to make us wretched.” 

One thing that began to trouble me was, whether I had 
the right kind of faith. Old definitions of faith recurred 
to me, by which faith is said to be nothing unless it is in¬ 
formed with charity and developed into good works, so that 
when it saith we are justified by faith, the part is taken for 
the whole—and it means by faith, also hope, charity, all the 
graces, and all good works. 

But Brother Martin declared itmeaneth simply believing. 
He said: 

“ Faith is an almighty thing, for it giveth glory to God, 
which is the highest service that can be given to him. 
Now, to give glory to God, is to believe in him; to count 
him true, wise, righteous, merciful, almighty. The chief- 
est thing God requireth of man is, that he giveth unto him 
his glory and divinity; that is to say, that he taketh him 
not for an idol, but for God; who regard eth him, heareth 
him, showeth mercy unto him, and helpeth him- For 
faith saith thus, ‘I believe thee, oh God, when thou 
speakest.’ ” 

But our great wisdom, he says, is to look away from all 


THE SCUONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


VZh 


these questionings—from our sins, our works, ourselves, 
to Christ, who is our righteousness, our Saviour, our all. 

< Then at times other things perplex me. If faith is so 
simple, and salvation so free, why all those orders, rules, 
pilgrimages, penances? 

And to these perplexities we can neither of us find any 
answer. But we must be obedient to the church. What 
we cannot understand we must receive and obey. This is 
a monk’s duty, at least. 

Then at times another temptation comes on me. “If 
thou hadst known of this before,” a voice says deep in my 
heart, “thou couldst have served (irod joyfully in thy house, 
instead of painfully in the cloister; wouldst have helped 
thy parents and Else, and spoken with Eva on these things, 
which her devout and simple heart has doubtless received 
already.” But, alas! I know too well what tempter ven¬ 
tures to suggest that name to me, and I say, “Whatever 
might have been, malicious spirit, now I am a religious, a 
devoted man, to whom it is perdition to draw back!” 

Yet, in a sense, I seem less separated from my beloved 
ones during these past days. 

There is a brotherhood, there is a family, more perma¬ 
nent than the home at Eisenach, or even the Order of St. 
Augustine, in which we may be united still. There is a 
home in which, perhaps, we may yet be one household. 

And meantime, God may have some little useful work for 
me to do here, which in his presence may make life pass as 
quickly as this my pilgrimage to Borne in Brother Martin’s 
company. 

Benedictine Monastery in Lombardy. 

God has given us during these last days to see, as I verily 
believe, some glimpses into Eden. The mountains with 
snowy summits, like the white steps of His throne; the 
rivers which flow from them and enrich the land; the 
crystal sea, like glass mingled with fire, where the reflected 
snow-peaks burn in the lakes at dawn or sunset; and then 
this Lombard plain, watered with rivers which make its 
harvests gleam like gold; this garner of God, where the 
elms or chestnuts grow among the golden maize, and the 
vines festoon the trees, so that all the land seems garlanded 
for a perpetual holy day. We came through the Tyrol by 
Fiissen, and then struck across by the mountains and the 
lakes to Milan, 


126 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Now we are entertained like princes in this rich Bene¬ 
dictine abbey. Its annual income is 36,000 florins. “ Of 
eating and feasting,” as Brother Martin says, “there is no 
lack;” for that 12,000 florins are consumed on guests, and 
as large a sum on building. The residue goes to the con¬ 
vent and the brethren. 

They have received us poor German monks with much 
honor, as a deputation from the great Augustinian order 
to the pope. 

The manners of these southern people are very gentle and 
courteous; but they are lighter in their treatment of sacred 
things than we could wish. 

The splendor of the furniture and dress amazes us; it is 
difficult to reconcile it with the vows of poverty and renun¬ 
ciation of the world. But I suppose they regard the vow 
of poverty as binding not on the community, but only on 
the individual monk. It must, however, at the best, be 
hard to live a severe and ascetic life amid such luxuries. 
Many, no doubt, do not try. 

The tables are supplied with the most costly and delicate 
viands; the walls are tapestried; the dresses are of fine silk; 
the floors are inlaid with rich marbles. 

Poor, poor splendors, as substitutes for the humblest 
home! 


Bologna, June. 

We did not remain long in the Benedictine monastery, 
for this reason: Brother Martin, I could see, had been 
much perplexed by their luxurious living; but as a guest, 
had, I suppose, scarcely felt at liberty to remonstrate until 
Friday came, when, to our amazement, the table was cov¬ 
ered with meats and fruits, and all kinds of viands, as on 
any other day, regardless not only of the rules of the order, 
but of the common laAVS of the whole church. 

He would touch none of these dainties; but not content 
with this silent protest, he boldly said before the whole 
company, “The church and the pope forbid such things.” 

We had then an opportunity of seeing into what the 
smoothness of these Italian manners can change when 
ruffled. 

The whole brotherhood burst into a storm of indignation. 
Their dark eyes flashed, their white teeth gleamed with 
scornful and angry laughter, and their voices rose in a tem- 


THE 8CH0NBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 127 

pest of vehement words, many of which were unintelligible 
to us. 

“Intruders,” “barbarians,” “coarse and ignorant Ger¬ 
mans,” and other biting epithets, however, we could too 
well understand. 

Brother Martin stood like a rock amid the torrent, and 
threatened to make their luxury and disorder known at 
Borne. 

When the assembly broke up we noticed the brethren 
gather apart in small groups, and cast scowling glances at 
us when we chanced to pass near. 

That evening the porter of the monastery came to us 
privately, and warned us that this convent was no longer a 
safe resting-place for us. 

Whether this was a friendly warning, or merely a device 
of the brethren to get rid of troublesome guests, I know 
not; but we had no wish to linger, and before the next 
day dawned we crept in the darkness out of a side gate into 
a boat, which we found on the river which flows beneath 
the walls, and escaped. 

It was delightful to-day winding along the side of a hill, 
near Bologna, for miles, under the flickering shade of trel¬ 
lises, covered with vines. But Brother Martin, I thought, 
looked ill and weary. 

Bologna. 

Thank God, Brother Martin is reviving again. He has 
been on the very borders of the grave. 

Whether it was the scorching heat through which we 
have been traveling, or the malaria, which affected us with 
catarrh one night when we slept with our windows open, or 
whether the angry monks in the Benedictine abbey mixed 
some poison with our food, I know not, but we had scarcely 
reached this place when he became seriously ill. 

As I watched beside him I learned something of the an¬ 
guish he passed through at our convent at Erfrut. The 
remembrance of his sins, and the terrors of God’s judg¬ 
ment rushed on his mind, weakened by suffering. At 
times he recognized that it was the hand of the evil one 
which was keeping him down. “ The devil,” he would say, 
“is the accuser of the brethren, not Christ. Thou, Lord 
Jesus, art my forgiving Saviour!” And then he would rise 
above the floods. Again his mind would bewilder itself 


128 


THE schonberg-cotta FAMILY. 


with the unfathomable—the origin of evil, the relation of 
our free will to God’s almighty will. 

Then I ventured to recall to him the words of Dr. Stau- 
pitz he had repeated to me: “Behold the wounds of Jesus 
Christ, and then thou shalt see the counsel of God clearly 
shining forth. We cannot comprehend God out of Jesus 
Christ. In Christ you will find what God is, and what he 
requires. You will find him nowhere else, whether in 
heaven or on earth.” 

It was strange to find myself, untried recruit that I am, 
thus attempting to give refreshment to such a veteran and 
victor as Brother Martin; but when the strongest are 
brought into single combats such as these, which must he 
single, a feeble hand may bring a draught of cold water to 
revive the hero between the pauses of the fight. 

The victory, however, can only be won by the combatant 
himself; and at length Brother Martin fought his way 
through once more, and as so often, just when the fight 
seemed hottest. It was with an old weapon he overcame— 
“ The just shall live by faith.” 

Once more the words which have helped him so often, 
which so frequently he has repeated on his journey, came 
with power to his mind. Again he looked to the crucified 
Saviour, again he believed in Him triumphant and ready to 
forgive on the throne of grace; and again his spirit was in 
the light. 

His strength also soon began to return; and in a few 
days we are to be in Rome. 

Rome. 

The pilgrimage is over. The holy city is at length 
reached. 

Across burning plains, under trellised vine walks on the 
hillsides, over wild, craggy mountains, through valleys 
green with chestnuts and olives and thickets of myrtle, and 
fragrant with lavender and cistus, we walked, until at last 
the sacred towers and domes burst on our sight, across a 
reach of the Campagna; the city where St. Paul and St. 
Peter were martyred, the metropolis of the kingdom of 
God. 

The moment we came in sight of the city Brother Mar¬ 
tin prostrated himself on the earth, and lifting up his hands 
to heaven, exclaimed: 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 129 

“Hail, sacred Rome! thrice sacred for the blood of the 
martyrs here shed.” 

And now we are within the sacred walls, lodged in the 
Augustinian monastery, near to the northern gate, through 
which we entered, called by the Romans the “Porta del 
Popolo.” 

Already Brother Martin has celebrated a mass in the 
convent church. 

And to-morrow we may kneel where apostles and mar¬ 
tyrs stood! 

We may perhaps even see the holy father himself. 

Are we indeed nearer heaven here? 

It seems to me as if I felt God nearer that night in the 
Black Forest. 

There is so much tumult and movement and pomp 
around us in the great city. 

When, however, I feel it more familiar and home-like 
perhaps it will seem more heaven-like. 


PART IX. 
else’s story. 

. Eisenach, April. 

The last words I shall write in our dear old lumber- 
room, Fritz’s and mine! I have little to regret in it now, 
however, that our twilight talks are over forever. We 
leave early to-morrow morning for Wittenberg. It is 
strange to look out into the old street and think how all 
will look exactly the same there to-morrow evening, the 
monks slowly paciug along in pairs, the boys rushing out 
of school as they are now, the maid-servants standing at the 
doors with the babes in their arms, or wringing their mops 
—and we gone. How small a blank people seem to make 
when they are gone, however large the space they seemed 
to fill when they were present—except, indeed, to two or 
three hearts! I see this with Fritz. It seemed to me our 
little world must fall when he, its chief pillar, was with¬ 
drawn. Yet now everything seems to go on the same as 
before he became a monk—except, indeed, with the mother 
and Eva, and me. 

The mother seems more and more like a shadow gliding 
in and out among us. Tenderly, indeed, she takes on her 



130 


THE SCHONBE11G-COTTA FAMIL Y. 


all she can of our family cares; but to family joys she seems 
spiritless and dead. Since she told me of the inclination 
she thinks she neglected in her youth toward the cloister, 
I understand her better, the trembling fear with which she 
receives any good thing, and the hopeless submission, with 
which she bows to every trouble as to the blows of a rod 
always suspended over her, and only occasionally merci¬ 
fully withheld from striking. 

In the loss of Fritz the blow has fallen exactly where she 
would feel it most keenly. She had, I feel sure, planned 
another life for him. I see it in the peculiar tenderness of 
the tie which binds her to Eva. She said to me to-day, as 
we were packing up some of Fritz’s books, “ The sacrifice 
I was too selfish to make myself, my son has made for me. 
Oh, Else, my child, give at once, at once whatever God de¬ 
mands of you. What He demands must be given at last, 
and if only wrung out from us at last, God only knows with 
what fearful interest the debt may have to be paid.” 

The words weigh on me like a curse. I cannot help 
feeling sometimes, as I know she feels always, that the 
family is under some fatal spell. 

But oh, how terrible the thought is that this is the way 
God exacts retribution! A creditor, exacting to the last 
farthing for the most trifling transaction, and if payment 
is delayed, taking life or limb or what is dearer in exchange! 
I cannot bear to think of it. For if my mother is thus 
visited for a mistake, for neglecting a doubtful vocation, 
my pious, sweet mother, what hope is there for me, who 
scarcely pass a day without having to repent of saying some 
sharp word to those boys (who certainly are often very 
provoking), or doing what I ought not, or omitting some 
/religious duty, or at least without envying some one who is 
richer, or inwardly murmuring at our lot—even sometimes 
thinking bitter thoughts of our father and his discoveries! 

Our dear father has at last arranged and fitted in all his 
treasures, and is the only one, except the children, who 
seems thoroughly pleased at the thought of our emigration. 
All day he has been packing and unpacking and repacking 
his machines into some especially safe corners of the great 
wagon which Cousin Conrad Cotta has lent us for our 
journey. 

Eva, on the other hand, seems to belong to this world as 
little as the mother. Not that she looks depressed or hope- 


THE SCHONBEIIG-COTTA FAMILY. 


131 


less. Her face often perfectly beams with peace; but it 
seems entirely independent of everything here, and is 
neither ruffled by the difficulties we encounter nor enhanced 
when anything goes a little better. I must confess it rather 
provokes me, almost as much as the boys do. I have seri¬ 
ous fears that one day she will leave us, like Fritz, and take 
refuge in a convent. And yet I am sure I have not a fault 
to find with her. I suppose that is exactly what our 
grandmother and I feel so provoking. Lately, she has 
abandoned all her Latin books for a German book entitled 
“Theologia Teutsch,’' or “ Theologia Germanica,” which 
Fritz sent us before he left the Erfurt convent on his pil¬ 
grimage to Rome. This book seems to make Eva very 
happy; but as to me, it appears to me more unintelligible 
than Latin. Although it is quite different from all the 
other religious books I ever read, it does not suit me any 
better. Indeed, it seems as if I never should find the kind 
of religion that would suit me. It all seems so sublime 
and vague, and so far out of my reach; only fit for people 
who have time to climb the heights; while my path seems 
to lie in the valleys, and among the streets, and amid all 
kinds of little everyday secular duties and cares, which 
religion is too lofty to notice. 

I can only hope that some day at the end of my life God 
will graciously give me a little leisure to be religious and to 
prepare to meet Him, or that Eva’s and Fritz’s prayers and 
merits will avail for me. 


Wittenberg, May, 1510. 

We are beginning to get settled into our new home, 
which is in the street near the university buildings. Mar¬ 
tin Luther, or Brother Martin, has a great name here. 
They say his lectures are more popular than any one’s. 
And he also frequently preaches in the city church. Our 
grandmother is not pleased with the change. She calls the 
town a wretched mud village, and wonders what can have 
induced the electors of Saxony to fix their residence and 
found a university in such a sandy desert as this. She sup¬ 
poses it is very much like the deserts of Arabia. 

But Christopher and I think differently. There are 
several very fine buildings here, beautiful churches, and 
the university, and the castle, and the Augustinian mon¬ 
astery; and we have no doubt that in time the rest of the 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


132 

town will grow up to them. I have heard our grandmothei 
say that babies with features too large for their faces often 
prove the handsomest people when they grow up to their 
features. And so, no doubt, it will be with Wittenberg, 
which is at present certainly rather like an infant with the 
eyes and nose of a full-grown man. The mud walls and 
low cottages with thatched roofs look strangely out of 
keeping with the new buildings, the elector’s palace and 
church at the western end, the city church in the center, 
and the Augustinian cloister and university at the eastern 
extremity, near the Elster gate, close to which we live. 

It is true that there are no forests of pines, and wild hills, 
and lovely green valleys here, as around Eisenach. But our 
grandmother need not call it a wilderness. The white 
sand-hills on the north are broken with little dells and 
copses; and on the south, not two hundred rods from the 
town, across a heath, flows the broad, rapid Elbe. 

The great river is a delight to me. It leads one’s 
thoughts back to its quiet sources among the mountains, 
and onward to its home in the great sea. We had no great 
river at Eisenach, which is an advantage on the side of 
Wittenberg. And then the banks are fringed with low 
oaks and willows, which bend affectionately over the water, 
and are delightful to sit among on summer evenings. 

If I were not a little afraid of the people! The father 
does not like Eva and me to go out alone. The students 
are rather wild. This year, however, they have been for¬ 
bidden by the rector to carry arms, which is some comfort. 
But the townspeople also are warlike and turbulent, and 
drink a great deal of beer. There are one hundred and 
seventy breweries in the place, although there are not more 
than three hundred and fifty houses. Few of the inhabi¬ 
tants send their children to school, although there are five 
hundred students from all parts of Germany at the 
university. 

Some of the poorer people, who come from the country 
around to the markets, talk a language I cannot understand. 
Our grandmother says they are Wends, and that this town 
is the last place on the borders of the civilized world. 
Beyond it, she declares, there are nothing but barbarians 
and Tartars. Indeed, she is not sure whether our neighbors 
themselves are Christians. 

St. Boniface, the great apostle of the Saxons, did not 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


133 


extend bis labors further than Saxonv; and she says the 
Teutonic knights who conquered Prussia and the regions 
beyond us, were only Christian colonists living in the midst 
of half-heathen savages. To me it is rather a gloomy idea, 
to think that between Wittenberg and the Turks and Tar¬ 
tars, or even the savages in the Indies beyond, which 
Christopher Columbus has discovered, there are only a few 
half-civilized Wends, living in those wretched hamlets 
which dot the sandy heaths around the town. 

But the father says it is a glorious idea, and that, if he 
w T ere only a little younger, he would organize a land expe¬ 
dition, and traverse the country until he reached the Span¬ 
iards and the Portuguese, who sailed to the same point by 
sea. 

“Only to think,” he says, “that in a few weeks, or 
months at the utmost, we might reach Cathay, El Dorado, 
and even Atlantis itself, where the houses are roofed and 
paved with gold, and return laden with treasures!” It 
seems to make him feel even his experiments with the re¬ 
torts and crucibles in which he is alwa'ys on the point of 
transmuting lead into silver, to be tame and slow processes. 
Since we have been here, he has for the time abandoned his 
alchemical experiments, and sits for hours with a great 
map spread before him, calculating in the most accurate 
and elaborate manner how long it would take to reach the 
new Spanish discoveries by way of Wendish Prussia. 
“For,” he remarks, “if I am never able to carry out the 
scheme myself, it may one day immortalize one of my sons, 
and enrich and ennoble the whole of our family!” 

Our journey from Eisenach was one continual fete to the 
children. For my mother and the baby—now two years 
old—we made a couch in the wagon, of the family bedding. 
My grandmother sat erect in a nook among the furniture. 
Little Thekla was enthroned like a queen on a pile of pil¬ 
lows, where she sat hugging her own especial treasures, 
her broken doll, the wooden horse Christopher made for 
her, a precious store of cones and pebbles from the forest, 
and a very shaggy, disreputable foundling dog which she 
has adopted, and can by no means be persuaded to part 
with. She calls the dog Nix, and is sure that he is always 
asking her with his wistful eyes to teach him to speak, and 
give him a soul. With these, her household gods, pre¬ 
served to her, she showed little feeling at parting from the 
rest of our Eisenach world. 


134 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


The father was equally absorbed with his treasures, his 
folios, and models, and instruments, which he jealously 
guarded. 

Eva had but one inseparable treasure, the volume of the 
“Theologia Germanica,” which she had appropriated. 

The mother’s especial thought was the baby. Chriem- 
hild was overwhelmed with the parting with Pollux, who 
was left behind with Cousin Conrad Cotta; and Atlantis 
was so wild with delight at the thought of the new world 
and the new life, from which she was persuaded all the 
cares of the old were to be extracted forever, that, had it 
not been for Christopher and me, I must say the general 
interests of the family would have been rather in the back¬ 
ground. 

For the time there was a truce between Christopher and 
me concerning “Reinecke Fuchs,” and our various differ¬ 
ences. All his faculties—which have been so prolific for 
mischief—seemed suddenly turned into useful channels, 
like the mischievous elves of the farm and hearth, when 
they are capriciously bent on doing some poor human being 
a good turn. He scarcely tried my temper once during the 
whole journey. Since we reached Wittenberg, however, 
I cannot say as much. I feel anxious about the compan¬ 
ions he has found among the students, and often, often I 
long that Fritz’s religion had led him to remain among us, 
at least until the boys had grown up. 

I had nerved myself beforehand for the leave-taking with 
the old friends and the old home, but when the moving 
actually began, there was no time to think of anything but 
packing in the last things which had been nearly forgotten, 
and arranging every one in their places. I had not even a 
moment for a last look at the old house, for at the instant 
we turned the corner, Thekla and her treasures nearly came 
to an untimely end by the downfall of one of the father’s 
machines; which so discouraged Thekla, and excited our 
grandmother, Nix, and the baby, that it required consider¬ 
able soothing to restore every one to equanimity; and, in 
the meantime, the corner of the street had been turned, and 
the dear old house was out of sight. I felt a pang, as if I 
had wronged it, the old home which had sheltered us so 
many years, and been the silent witness of so many joys 
and cares, and sorrows! 

We had few adventures during the first day, except that 


THE 8CIIONBEEO-COTTA FAMILY. 


135 


Thekla’s peace was often broken by the difficulties in which 
Nix’s self-confident but not very courageous disposition 
frequently involved him with the cats and dogs in the vil¬ 
lage, and their proprietors. 

The first evening in the forest was delightful. We en¬ 
camped in a clearing. Sticks were gathered for a fire, 
round which we arranged such bedding and furniture as we 
could unpack, and the children were wild with delight at 
thus combining serious household work with play, while 
Christopher foddered and tethered the horses. 

After our meal we began to tell stories, but our grand¬ 
mother positively forbade our mentioning the name of any 
of the forest sprites, or of any evil or questionable creature 
whatever. 

In the night I could not sleep. All was so strange and 
grand around us, and it did seem to me that there were 
wailings and sighings and distant moanings among the 
pines, not quite to be accounted for by the wind. I grew 
rather uneasy, and at length lifted my head to see if any 
one else was awake. 

Opposite me sat Eva, her face lifted to the stars, her 
hands clasped, and her lips moving as if in prayer. I felt 
her like a guardian angel, and instinctively drew nearer to 
her. 

“Eva,” I whispered at last, “do you not think there are 
rather strange and unaccountable noises around us? I 
wonder if it can be true that strange creatures haunt the 
forests. ” 

“ I think there are always spirits around us, Cousin Else,” 
she replied, “good and evil spirits prowling around us, or 
ministering to us. I suppose in the solitude we feel them 
nearer, and perhaps they are.” 

I was not at all reassured. 

“Eva,” I said, “I wish you would say some prayers; I 
feel afraid I may not think of the right ones. But are you 
really not at all afraid?” 

“Why should I be?” she said softly; “God is nearer us 
always than all the spirits, good or evil, nearer and greater 
than all. And he is the Supreme Goodness. I like the sol¬ 
itude, Cousin Else, because it seems to lift me above all the 
creatures to the One who is all and in all. And I like the 
wild forests,” she continued, as if to herself, “ because God is 
the only owner there, and I can feel more unreservedly, 


136 THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

that we, and the creatures, and all we most call our own, 
are his, and only his. In the cities, the houses are called 
after the names of men, and each street and house is divided 
into little plots, of each of which some one says, ‘It is 
mine.’ But here all is visibly only God’s, undivided, 
common to all. There is but one table, and that is his; 
the creatures live as free pensioners on his bounty.” 

“Is it then sin to call anything our own?” I asked. 

“My book says it was this selfishness that was the cause 
of Adam’s fall,” she replied. “Some say it was because 
Adam ate the apple that he was lost, or fell; but my book 
says it was ‘because of his claiming something for his own; 
and because of his saying, I, mine, me, and the like.’ ” 

That is very difficult to understand. I said, “Am I not 
to say, my mother, my father, my Fritz? Ought I to love 
every one the same because all are equally God’s? If 
property is sin, then why is stealing sin? Eva, this reli¬ 
gion is quite above and beyond me. It seems to me in this 
way it would be almost as wrong to give thanks for what 
we have, as to covet what we have not, because we ought 
not to think we have anything. It perplexes me extremely.” 

I lay down again, resolved not to think any more about 
it. Fritz and I proved once, a long time ago, how useless 
it is for me, at least, to attempt to get beyond the ten com¬ 
mandments. But trying to comprehend what Eva said so 
bewildered me, that my thoughts soon wandered beyond my 
control altogether. I heard no more of Eva or the winds, 
but fell into a sound slumber, and dreamed that Eva and an 
angel were talking beside me all night in Latin, which I 
felt I ought to understand, but of course could not. 

The next day, we had not been long on our journey, 
when, at a narrow part of the road, in a deep valley, a 
company of horsemen suddenly dashed down from a castle 
which towered on our right, and barred our further progress 
with serried lances. 

“Do you belong to Erfurt?” asked the leader, turning 
our horses’ heads, and pushing Christopher aside with the 
butt end of his gun. 

“No,” said Christopher, “to Eisenach.” 

“Give way, men,” shouted the knight to his followers, 
“we have no quarrel with Eisenach. This is not what we 
are waiting for.” 

The cavaliers made a passage for us, but a young knight, 
who seemed to lead them, rode on beside us for a time. 


THE SCHONBEKG-C0TTA FAMILY. 


137 


“Did you pass any merchandise on your road?” he asked 
m* Christopher, using the form of address he would have to 
a peasant. 

“We are not likely to pass anything,” replied Christo¬ 
pher, not very courteously, “laden as we are.” 

“ What is your lading?” asked the knight. 

“All our worldly goods,” replied Christopher, curtly. 

“What is your name, friend, and where are you bound?” 

“Cotta,” answered Christopher. “My father is the 
director of the elector’s printing press at the new Univer¬ 
sity of Wittenberg.” 

“Cotta!” rejoined the knight more respectfully, “a good 
burgher name;” and saying this he rode back to the wagon 
and saluting our father, surveyed us all with a cool free¬ 
dom, as if his notice honored us, until his eye lighted on 
Eva, who was sitting with her arm round Thekla, soothing 
the frightened child, and helping her to arrange some 
violets Christopher had gathered a few minutes before. 
His voice lowered when he saw her, and he said : 

“This is no burgher maiden, surely? May I ask your 
name, fair fraiilein?” he said, doffing his hat, and address¬ 
ing Eva. 

She made no reply, but continued arranging her flowers, 
without changing feature or color, except that her lip 
curled and quivered slightly. 

“The fraiilein is absorbed with her bouquet; would that 
we were nearer our schloss, that I might olfer her flowers 
more worthy of her handling.” 

“Are you addressing me?” said Eva at length, raising 
her large eyes, and fixing them on him with her gravest 
expression; “I am no fraulein, I am a burgher maiden; 
but if I were a queen, any of God’s flowers would be fair 
enough for me. And to a true knight,” she added, “a 
peasant maiden is as sacred as a queen.” 

No one ever could trifle with that earnest expression of 
Eva’s face. It was his turn to be abashed. His effrontery 
failed him altogether, and he murmured, “ I have merited 
the rebuke. These flowers are too fair, at least for me. If 
you would bestow one on me, I would keep it sacredly as a 
gift of my mother’s, or as the relics of a saint.” 

“You can gather them anywhere in the forest,” said Eva; 
but little Thekla filled both her little hands with violets, 
and gave them to him. 


138 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“Yon may have them all if yon like,” she said; “Chris¬ 
topher can gather ns plenty more.” 

He took them carefully from the child’s hand, and, 
bowing low, rejoined his men who were in front. He then 
returned, said a few words to Christopher, and with his 
troop retired to some distance behind us, and followed us 
till we were close to Erfurt, when he spurred on to my 
father’s side, and saying rapidly, “You will be safe now, 
and need no further convoy,” once more bowed respectfully 
to us, and rejoining his men, we soon lost the echo of their 
horse-hoofs, as they galloped back through the forest. 

“ What did the knight say to you, Christopher?” I asked, 
when we dismounted at Erfurt that evening. 

“He said that part of the forest was dangerous at pres¬ 
ent, because of a feud between the knights and the 
burghers, and if we would allow him, he would be our es¬ 
cort until we came in sight of Erfurt.” 

“That, at least, was courteous of him,” I said. 

“ Such courtesy as a burgher may expect of a knight,” 
rejoined Christopher, uncompromisingly; “to insult us 
without provocation, and then, as a favor, exempt us from 
their own illegal oppressions! But women are always fas¬ 
cinated with what men on horseback do.” 

“No one is fascinated with any one,” I replied. For it 
always provokes me exceedingly when that boy talks in 
that way about women. And our grandmother interposed, 
“ Don’t dispute, children; if your grandfather had not been 
unfortunate, you would have been of the knights’ order 
yourselves, therefore it is not for you to run down the 
nobles.” 

“I should never have been a knight,” persisted Christo¬ 
pher, “or a priest, or a robber.” But it was consolatory to 
my grandmother and me to consider how exalted our 
position would have been, had it not been for certain little 
unfortunate hindrances. Our grandmother never admitted 
my father into the pedigree. 

At Leipsic we left the children, while our grandmother, 
our mother, Eva, and I went on foot to see Aunt Agnes at 
the convent of Nimptschen, whither she had been trans¬ 
ferred, some years before, from Eisenach. 

We only saw her through the convent grating. But it 
seemed to me as if the voice, and manner, and face were 
entirely unchanged since that last interview when she terri- 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 139 

fied me as a child by asking me to become a sister, and 
abandon Fritz. 

Only the voice sounded to me even more like a muffled 
bell used only for funerals, especially when she said, in 
reference to Fritz’s entering the cloister, “Praise to God, 
and the blessed Virgin, and all the saints. At last, then, 
He has heard my unworthy prayers; one at last is saved!” 

A cold shudder passed over me at her words. Had she 
then, indeed, all these years been praying that our happi¬ 
ness should be ruined and our home desolated? And had 
God heard her? Was the fatal spell, which my mother 
feared was binding us, after all nothing else than Aunt 
Agnes’ terrible prayers? 

Her face looked as lifeless as ever, in the folds of white 
linen which bound it into a regular oval. Her voice was 
metallic and lifeless; the touch of her hand was impassive 
and cold as marble when we took leave of her. My mother 
wept, and said, “Dear Agnes, perhaps we may never meet 
again on earth.” 

“Perhaps not,” was the reply. 

“You will not forget us, sister?” said my mother. 

“I never forget you,” was the reply, in the same deep, 
low, firm, irresponsive voice, which seemed as if it had never 
vibrated to anything more human than an organ playing 
Gregorian chants. 

And the words echo in my heart to this instant, like a 
knell. 

She never forgets us. 

Nightly in her vigils, daily in church and cell, she 
watches over us, and prays God not to let us be too happy. 

And God hears her, and grants her prayers. It is too 
clear he does. Had she not been asking him to make Fritz 
a monk? and is not Fritz separated from us forever? 

“ How did you like the convent, Eva?” I said to her that 
night when we were alone. 

“It seemed very still and peaceful,” she said. “I think 
one could be very happy there. There would be so much 
time for prayer. One could perhaps more easily lose self 
there, and become nearer to God.” 

“But what did you think of Aunt Agnes?” 

“I felt drawn to her. I think she has suffered.” 

“She seems to me dead alike to joy or suffering,” I said. 

“But people do not thus die without pain,” said Eva 
very gravely. 


140 


THE SGHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


Our house at Wittenberg is small. From the upper 
■windows we look over the city walls, across the heath, to 
the Elbe, which gleams and sparkles between its willows 
and dwarf oaks. Behind the house is a plot of neglected 
ground, which Christopher is busy at his leisure hours 
trenching and spading into an herb-garden. We are to 
have a few flowers on the borders of the straight walk which 
intersects it, daffodils, pansies, roses, and sweet violets, 
and gilliflowers, and wallflowers. At the end of the garden 
are two apple trees and a pear tree, which had shed their 
blossoms just before we arrived, in a carpet of pink and 
white petals. Under the shade of these I carry my em¬ 
broidery frame, when the housework is finished; and 
sometimes little Thekla comes and prattles to me, and 
sometimes Eva reads and sings to me. I cannot help re¬ 
gretting that lately Eva is so absorbed with that “ Theolo- 
gia Germanica.” I cannot understand it as well as I do 
the Latin hymns when once she has translated them to me; 
for these speak of Jesus the Saviour, who left the heavenly 
home and sat weary by the way seekiug for us; or of Mary, 
his dear mother; and although sometimes they tell of wrath 
and judgment, at all events I know what it means. But 
this other book is all to me one dazzling haze, without sun, 
or moon, or stars, or heaven, or earth, or seas, or anything 
distinct, but all a blaze of indistinguishable glory, which is 
God; the One who is all—a kind of ocean of goodness, in 
which, in some mysterious w r ay, we ought to be absorbed. 
But I am not an ocean, or any part of one; and I cannot 
love an ocean, because it is infinite, or unfathomable, or 
all-sufficient, or anything else. 

My mother’s thought of God, as watching lest we should 
he too happy and love any one more than himself, remem¬ 
bering the mistakes and sins of youth, and delaying to 
punish them until just the moment when the punishment 
would be most keenly felt, is dreadful enough. But even 
that is not to me so bewildering and dreary as this all- 
absorbing Being in Eva’s book. The God my mother 
dreads has indeed eyes of severest justice, and a frown of 
wrath against the sinner; but if once one could learn how 
to please him, the eyes might smile, the frown might pass. 
It is a countenance, and a heart which would meet ours. 
But when Eva reads her book to me, I seem to look up into 
heaven and see nothing but heaven—light, space, infinity, 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


141 


and still on and on, infinity and light; a moral light, in¬ 
deed—perfection, purity, goodness; but no eyes I can look 
into, no heart to meet mine—none whom I could speak to, 
or touch, or see. 

This evening we opened our window and looked out 
across the heath to the Elbe. 

The town was quite hushed. The space of sky above us 
over the plain looked so large and deep. We seemed to see 
range after range of stars beyond each other in the clear 
air. The only sound was the distant, steady rush of the 
broad river, which gleamed here and there in the starlight. 

Eva was looking up with her calm, bright look. 
“Thine!” she murmured, “all this is Thine; and we are 
Thine, and Thou art here! How much happier it is to be 
able to look up and feel there is no barrier of our own poor 
ownership between us and Him, the possessor of heaven 
and earth! How much poorer we should be if we were 
lords of this land, like the elector, and if we said, ‘All this 
is mine!’ and so saw only I and mine in it all, instead of 
God and God’s!” 

“Yes,” I said, “if we ended in saying I and mine; but I 
should be very thankful if God gave me a little more out of 
his abundance, to use for our wants. And yet, how much 
better things are with us than they were; the appointment 
of my father as director of the elector’s printing establish¬ 
ment, instead of a precarious struggle for ourselves; and 
this embroidery of mine! It seems to me, Eva, sometimes, 
we might be a happy family yet.” 

“My book,” she replied thoughtfully, “says we shall 
never be truly satisfied in God, or truly free, unless all 
things are one to us, and One is all, and something and 
nothing are alike. I suppose I am not quite truly free, 
Cousin Else, for I cannot like this place quite as much as 
the old Eisenach home.” 

I began to feel quite impatient, and I said, “Nor can I 
or any of us ever feel any home quite the same again, since 
Fritz is gone. But as to feeling something and nothing 
are alike, I never can, and I will never try. One might as 
well be dead at once.” 

“Yes,” said Eva gravely; “I suppose we shall never 
comprehend it quite, or be quite satisfied and free, until we 
die.” 


142 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


We talked no more that night; hut I heard her singing 
one of her favorite hymns:* 

In the fount of life perennial the parched heart its thirst would slake, 
And the soul, in flesh imprisoned, longs her prison-walls to break— 
Exile, seeking, sighing, yearning in her Fatherland to wake. 

When with cares oppressed and sorrows, only groans her grief can 
tell, 

Then she contemplates the glory which she lost when first she fell: 
Memory of the vanished good the present evil can but swell. 

Who can utter what the pleasures and the peace unbroken are 
Where arise the pearly mansions, shedding silvery light afar— 
Festive seats and golden roofs, which glitter like the evening star? 

Wholly of fair stones most precious are those radiant structures made; 
With pure gold, like glass transparent, are those shining streets in¬ 
laid; 

Nothing that defiles can enter, nothing that can soil or fade. 

Stormy winter, burning summer, rage within these regions never; 
But perpetual bloom of roses, and unfading spring forever; 

Lilies gleam, the crocus glows, and dropping balms their scents 
deliver; 

Honey pure, and greenest pastures—this the land of promise is: 
Liquid odors soft distilling, perfumes breathing on the breeze; 

Fruits immortal cluster always on the leafy, fadeless trees. 

There no moon shines chill and changing, there no stars with twin¬ 
kling ray, 

For the lamb of that blest city is at once the sun and day; 

Night and time are known no longer—day shall never fade away. 

There the saints, like suns, are radiant—like the sun at dawn they 
glow; 

Crowned Victors after conflict, all their joys together flow; 

And, secure, they count the battles where they fought the prostrate 
foe. 

Every stain of flesh is cleansed, every strife is left behind; 

Spiritual are their bodies—perfect unity of mind; 

Dwelling in deep peace forever, no offense or grief they find. 


* Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitivit arida, 
Claustra carnis praesto frangi clausa quaerit anima, 
Gliscit, ambit, electatur, exul frui patria. 
etc , etc., etc. 

The translation only is given above. 



TEE SCHONBEUG~COTTA FAMILY. 


143 

Putting off their mortal vesture, in their source their souls they 
steep— 

Truth by actual vision learning, on its form their gaze they keep— 
Drinking from the living fountain draughts of living waters deep. 

Time, with all its alternations, enters not those hosts among— 
Glorious, wakeful, blest, no shade of chance or change o’er them is 
flung; 

Sickness cannot touch the deathless, nor old age the ever young. 

There their being is eternal—things that cease have ceased to be; 

All corruption there has perished—there they flourish strong and 
free; 

Thus mortality is swallowed up of life eternally. 

Naught from them is hidden—knowing Him to whom all things are 
known, 

All the spirit’s deep recesses, sinless, to each other shown— 

Unity of will and purpose, heart and mind forever one. 

Diverse as their varied labors the rewards to each that fall; 

But Love, what she loves in others evermore her own doth call: 

Thus the several joy of each becomes the common joy of all. 

Where the body is, there ever are the eagles gathered; 

For the saints and for the angels one most blessed feast is spread— 
Citizens of either country living on the selfsame bread. 

Ever filled and ever seeking, what they have they still desire; 
Hunger there shall fret them never, nor satiety shall tire— 

Still enjoying while aspiring, in their joy they still aspire. 

There the new song, new forever, those melodious voices sing, 
Ceaseless streams of fullest music through those blessed regions ring, 
Crowned victors ever bringing praises worthy of the King I 

Blessed who the King of Heaven in his beauty thus behold, 

And, beneath his throne rejoicing, see the universe unfold— 

Sun and moon, and stars and planets, radiant in his light unrolled. 

Christ, the palm of faithful victors! of that city make me free; 

When my warfare shall be ended, to its mansions lead thou me; 
Grant me, with its happy inmates, sharer of thy gifts to be! 

Let thy soldier, still contending, still be with thy strength supplied; 
Thou wilt not deny the quiet when the arms are laid aside; 

Make me meet with thee forever in that country to abide! 


144 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


Passion Week. 

Wittenberg has been very full this week. There have 
been great mystery-plays in the city church; and in the 
electoral church (Schloss Kirche) all the relics have been 
solemnly exhibited. Crowds of pilgrims have come from 
all the neighboring villages, Wendish and Saxon. It has 
been very unpleasant to go about the streets, so much beer 
has been consumed; and the students and peasants have 
had frequent encounters. It is certainly a comfort that 
there are large indulgences to be obtained by visiting the 
relics, for the pilgrims seem to need a great deal of indul¬ 
gence. 

The sacred mystery-plays were very magnificent. The 
Judas was wonderfully hateful—hunchbacked, and dressed 
like a rich Jewish miser; and the devils were dreadful 
enough to terrify the children for a year. Little Thekla 
was dressed in white, with gauze wings, and made a lovely 
angel—and enjoyed it very much. They wanted Eva to 
represent one of the holy women at the cross, but she would 
not. Indeed she nearly wept at the thought, and did not 
seem to like the whole ceremony at all. “ It all really hap¬ 
pened!” she said; “they really crucified Him! And He is 
risen, and living in heaven; and I cannot bear to see it per¬ 
formed like a fable.” 

The second day there was certainly more jesting and 
satire than I liked. Christopher said it reminded him of 
“Reinecke Fuchs.” 

In the middle of the second day we missed Eva, and 
when in a few hours I came back to the house to seek her, 
I found her kneeling by our bedside, sobbing as if her 
heart would break. I drew her toward me, but I could not 
discover that anything at all was the matter, except that 
the young knight who had stopped us in the forest had 
bowed very respectfully to her, and had shown her a few 
dried violets, which he said he should always keep in re¬ 
membrance of her and her words. 

It did not seem to me so unpardonable an offense, and I 
said so. 

“ He had no right to keep anything for my sake,” she 
sobbed. “No one will ever have any right to keep any¬ 
thing for my sake; and if Fritz had been here, he would 
never have allowed it.” 

“Little Eva,” I said, “what has become of your ‘Tlieo- 


THE SCRONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


145 


logia Teutsch?’ Your book says you are to take all things 
meekly, and be indifferent, I suppose, alike to admiration 
or reproach.” 

“ Cousin Else,” said Eva very gravely, rising and stand¬ 
ing erect before me with clasped hands, “ I have not learned 
the ‘Theologia’ through well yet, but I mean to try. The 
world seems to me very evil, and very sad. And there 
seems no place in it for an orphan girl like me. There is 
no rest except in being a wife or a nun. A wife I shall 
never be, and therefore, dear, dear Else,” she continued, 
kneeling down again, and throwing her arms around me, 
“I have just decided—I will go to the convent where Aunt 
Agnes is, and be a nun.” 

I did not attempt to remonstrate; but the next day I 
told the mother, who said gravely, “She will be happier 
there, poor child! We must let her go.” 

But she became pale as death, her lip quivered, and she 
added, “Yes, God must have the choicest of all. It is in 
vain indeed to fight against him.” Then fearing she might 
have wounded me, she kissed me and said, “Since Fritz 
left, she has grown so very dear; but how can I murmur 
when my loving Else is spared to us?” 

“Mother,” I said, “do you think Aunt Agnes has been 
praying again for this?” 

“ Probably,” she replied, with a startled look. “ She did 
look very earnestly at Eva.” 

“Then, mother,” I replied, “I shall write to Aunt Agnes 
at once, to tell her that she is not to make any such pray¬ 
ers for you or for me. For, as to me, it is entirely useless. 
And if you were to imitate St. Elizabeth, and leave us, it 
would break all our hearts, and the family would go to ruin 
altogether.” 

“ What are you thinking of, Else?” replied my mother 
meekly. “ It is too late indeed for me to think of being a 
saint." 1 can never hope for anything beyond this, that 
God in his great mercy may one day pardon me my sins, 
and receive me as the lowest of his creatures, for the sake 
of his dear Son who died upon the cross. What could you 
mean by my imitating St. Elizabeth?” 

I felt reassured, and did not pursue the subject, fearing 
it xui^ht suggest what I dreaded to my mother. 


146 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Wittenberg, June 14. 

And so Eva and Fritz are gone, the two religious ones 
of the family. They are gone into their separate convents, 
to be made saints, and have left us all to struggle on in the 
world without them—with all that helped us to be less 
earthly taken from us. It seems to me as if a lovely pic¬ 
ture of the holy mother had been removed from the dwell¬ 
ing-room since Eva has gone, and instead we had nothing 
left but family portraits, and paintings of common earthly 
things; or as if a window opening toward the stars had 
been covered by a low ceiling. She was always like a little 
bit of heaven among us. 

I miss her in our little room at night. Her prayers 
seemed to hallow it. I miss her sweet, holy songs at my 
embroidery; and now I have nothing to turn my thoughts 
from the arrangements for to-morrow, and the troubles of 
yesterday, and the perplexities of to-day. I had no idea 
how I must have been leaning on her. She always seemed 
so childlike, and so above my petty cares—and in practical 
things I certainly understood much more; and yet, in some 
way, whenever I talked anything over with her, it always 
seemed to take the burden away, to change cares into 
duties, and clear my thoughts wonderfully, just by lighten¬ 
ing my heart. It was not that she suggested what to do; 
but she made me feel things were working for good, not for 
harm—that God in some way ordered them and then the 
right thoughts seemed to come to me naturally. 

Our mother, I am afraid, grieves as much as she did for 
Fritz; but she tries to hide it, lest we should feel her un¬ 
grateful for the love of her children. 

I have a terrible dread sometimes that Aunt Agnes will 
get her prayers answered about our precious mother also, if 
not in one way, in another. She looks so pale and 
spiritless. 


June 20. 

Christopher has just returned from taking Eva to the 
convent. He says she shed many tears when he left her; 
which is a comfort. I could not bear to think that some¬ 
thing and nothing were alike to her yet. He told me also 
one thing, which has made me rather anxious. On the 
journey, Eva begged him to take care of our father’s sight, 
which, she said, she thought had been failing a little lately. 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


147 


And just before they separated she brought him a little jar 
of distilled eye-water, which the nuns were skillful in mak¬ 
ing, and sent it to our father with Sister Ave’s love. 

Certainly my father has read less lately; and now I think 
of it, he has asked me once or twice to find things for him, 
and to help him about his models, in a way he never used 
to do. 

It is strange that Eva, with those deep, earnest, quiet 
eyes, which seemed to look about so little, always saw be¬ 
fore any of us what every one wanted. Darling child! she 
will remember us, then, and our little cares. And she will 
have some eye-water to make, which will be much better 
for her than reading all day in that melancholy “ Theologia 
Teutsch.” 

But are we to call our Eva, Ave? She gave these lines 
of the hymn in her own writing to Christopher, to bring to 
me. She often used to sing it, and has explained tha 
words to me: 

“ Ave, maris Stella 
Dei mater alma 
Atque semper virgo 
Felix cceli porta. 

*' Siemens illud Ave 
Gabrielis ore 
Funda nos in pace 
Mutans nomen Evee. ” 

It is not an uncommon name, I know, with nuns. 

Well, dearly as I loved the old name, I cannot complain 
of the change. Sister Ave will be as dear to me as Cousin 
Eva, only a little bit further off, and nearer heaven. 

Her living so near heaven, while she was with us, never 
seemed to make her further off, but nearer to us all. 

Now, however, it cannot, of course, be the same. 

Our grandmother remains steadfast to the baptismal 
name. 

“ Receiving that Ave from the lips of Gabriel, the blessed 
mother transformed the name of our poor mother Eva.” 
And now our child Eva is on her way to become Saint Ave 
—God’s angel Ave in heaven. 

June 30. 

The young knight we met in the forest has called at our 
house to-day. 


148 


THE SCEONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY, 


I could scarcely command my voice at first to tell him 
where our Eva is, because I cannot help partly blaming 
him for her leaving us at last. 

“At Nimptschcn!” he said; “then she was noble, after 
all. None but maidens of noble houses are admitted there.” 

“Yes,” I said, “our mother’s family is noble.” 

“She was too heavenly for this world,” he murmured. 
“Her face, and something in her words and tones, have 
haunted me like a holy vision, or a church hymn, ever since 
I saw her.” 

I could not feel as indignant with the young knight as 
Eva did. And he seemed so interested in our father’s 
models, that we could not refuse him permission to come 
and see us again. 

Yes, our Eva was, I suppose, as he says, too religious and 
too heavenly for this world. 

Only, as so many of us have, after all, to live in the 
world, unless the world is to come to an end altogether, it 
would be a great blessing if God had made a religion for us 
poor, secular people, as well as one for the monks and nuns. 


PART X. 
fritz’s story. 

Rome, Augustinian Convent. 

Holy as this city necessarily must be, consecrated by 
relics of the church’s most holy dead, consecrated by the 
presence of her living head, I scarcely think religion is as 
deep in the hearts of these Italians as of our poor Germans 
in the cold north. 

But I may mistake; feeling of all kinds manifests itself 
in such different ways with different characters. 

Certainly the churches are thronged on all great occasions, 
and the festas are brilliant. But the people seem rather to 
regard them as holidays and dramatic entertainments, than 
as the solemn and sacred festivals we consider them in 
Saxony. This morning, for instance, I heard two women 
criticising a procession in words such as these, as far as the 
little Italian I have picked up enabled me to understand 
them* 

“Ah, Nina mia, the angels are nothing to-day; you 



THE SCHONBEUG-C0TTA FAMILY. 


140 


should have seen our Lucia last year! Every one said she 
was heavenly. If the priests do not arrange it better, peo¬ 
ple will scarcely care to attend. Besides, the music was 
execrable.” 

“ Ah, the nuns of the Cistercian convent understand how 
to manage a ceremony. They have ideas. Did you see 
their Bambino last Christmas? Such lace! and the cradle 
of tortoise-shell, fit for an emperor, as it should be! And 
then their robes for the Madonna on their fetes! Cloth of 
gold embroidered with pearls and brilliants worth a 
treasury!” 

“Yes,” replied the other, lowering her voice, “I have 
been told the history of those robes. A certain lady who 
was powerful at the late holy father’s court, is said to have 
presented the dress in which she appeared on some state 
occasion to the nuns, just as she wore it.” 

“Did she become a penitent, then?” 

“A penitent? I do not know; such an act of penitence 
would purchase indulgences and masses to last at least for 
some time.” 

Brother Martin and I do not so much affect these gor¬ 
geous processsions. These Italians, with their glorious 
skies and the rich coloring of their beautiful land, require 
more splendor in their religion than our German eyes can 
easily gaze on undazzled. 

It rather perplexed us to see the magnificent caparisons 
of the horses of the cardinals; and more especially to behold 
the holy father sitting on a fair palfrey, bearing the sacred 
host. In Germany, the loftiest earthly dignity prostrates 
itself low before that ineffable presence. 

But my mind becomes confused. Heaven forbid that I 
should call the vicar of Christ an earthly dignitary! Is he 
not the representative and oracle of God on earth? 

For this reason—no doubt in painful contradiction to the 
reverent awe natural to every Christian before the holy 
sacrament—the holy father submits to sitting enthroned in 
the church, and receiving the body of our Creator through 
a golden tube presented to him by a kneeling cardinal. 

It must be very difficult for him to separate between the 
office and the person. It is difficult enough for us. But 
for the human spirit not yet made perfect to receive these 
religious honors must be overwhelming. 

Doubtless, at night, when the holy father humbles him- 


150 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


self in solitude before God, his self-abasement is as much 
deeper than that of ordinary Christians as his exaltation is 
greater. 

I must confess that it is an inexpressible relief to me to 
retire to the solitude of my cell at night, and pray to Him 
of whom Brother Martin and I spoke in the Black Forest; 
to whom the homage of the universe is no burden, because 
it is not mere prostration before an office, but adoration of 
a person. “ Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty: heaven 
and earth are full of thy glory.” 

Holiness—to which almightiness is but an attribute— 
Holy One, who hast loved and given thine Holy One for a 
sinful world, miserere nobis. 

Rome, July. 

We have diligently visited all the holy relics, and offered 
prayers at every altar at which especial indulgences are pro¬ 
cured, for ourselves and others. 

Brother Martin once said he could almost wish his father 
and mother (whom he dearly loves) were dead, that he 
might avail himself of the privileges of this holy city to 
deliver their souls from purgatory. 

He says masses whenever he can. But the Italian priests 
are often impatient with him because he recites the office 
so slowly. I heard one of them say, contemptuously, he 
had accomplished thirty masses while Brother Martin only 
finished one. And more than once they hurry him for¬ 
ward, saying “ Passa! passa!” 

There is a strange disappointment in these ceremonies to 
me, and, I think, often to him. I seem to expect so much 
more, not more pomp, of that there is abundance; but 
when the ceremony begins, to which all the pomp of music, 
and processions of cavaliers, and richly robed priests, and 
costly shrines, are mere preliminary accessories, it seems 
often so poor. The kernel inside all this gorgeous shell 
seems to the eye of sense like a little poor withered dust. 

To the eye of sense! Yes, I forget. These are the 
splendors of faith , which faith only can uphold. 

To-day we gazed on the Veronica, the holy impression 
left by our Saviour’s face on the cloth St. Veronica pre¬ 
sented to him to wipe his brow, bowed under the weight of 
the cross. We had looked forward to this sight for days, 
for seven thousand years of indulgence from penance are 
attached to it. 


THE SCIIONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


151 


But when the moment came, Brother Martin and I could 
see nothing but a black board hung with a cloth, before 
which another white cloth was held. In a few minutes 
this was withdrawn, and the great moment was over, the 
glimpse of the sacred thing on which hung the fate of seven 
thousand years. For some time Brother Martin and I did 
not speak of it. I feared there had been some imperfection 
in my looking, which might affect the seven thousand 
years; but observing his countenance rather downcast, I 
told him my difficulty, and found that he also had seen 
nothing but a white cloth. 

The skulls of St. Peter and St. Paul perplexed us still 
more, because they had so much the appearance of being 
carved in wood. But in the crowd we could not approach 
very close; and doubtless Satan uses devices to blind the 
eyes even of the faithful. 

One relic excited my amazement much—the halter with 
which Judas hanged himself! It could scarcely be termed 
a holy relic. I wonder who preserved it, when so many 
other precious things are lost. Scarcely the apostles; per¬ 
haps the scribes, out of malice. 

The Romans, I observe, seem to care little for what to 
us is the kernel and marrow of these ceremonies—the ex¬ 
hibition of the holy relics. They seem more occupied in 
comparing the pomp of one year, or of one church, with 
another. 

We must not, I suppose, measure the good things do us 
by our own thoughts and feelings, but simply accept it on 
the testimony of the church. 

Otherwise I might be tempted to imagine that the relics 
of pagan Rome do my spirit more good than gazing on the 
sacred ashes or bones of martyrs or apostles. When I walk 
over the heaps of shapeless ruin, so many feet beneath 
which lies buried the grandeur of the old imperial city; or 
when I wander among the broken arches of the gigantic 
Colosseum, where the martyrs fought with wild beasts, 
great thoughts seem to grow naturally in my mind, and I 
feel how great truth is, and how little empires are. 

I see an empire solid as this Colosseum crumble into 
ruins as undistinguishable as the dust of those streets, be¬ 
fore the word of that once despised Jew of Tarsus, “in 
bodily presence weak,’' who was beheaded here. Or, again, 
in the ancient Pantheon, when the music of Christian 


152 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


chants rises among the shadowy forms of the old vanquished 
gods painted on the walls, and the light streams down, not 
from painted windows in the walls, but from the glowing 
heavens above, every note of the service echoes like a peal 
of triumph, and fills my heart with thankfulness. 

But my happiest hours here are spent in the church of 
my patron, St. Sebastian, without the wails, built over the 
ancient catacombs. 

Countless martyrs, they say, rest in peace in these ancient 
sepulchers. They have not been opened for centuries; but 
they are believed to wind in subterranean passages far be¬ 
neath the ancient city. In those dark depths the ancient 
church took refuge from persecution; there she laid her 
martyrs; and there, over their tombs, she chanted hymns 
of triumph, and held communion with Him for whom they 
died. In that church I spend hours. I have no wish to 
descend into those sacred sepulchers, and pry among the 
graves the resurrection trump will open soon enough. I 
like to think of the holy dead, lying undisturbed and quiet 
there; of their spirits in paradise; of their faith trium¬ 
phant in the city which massacred them. 

No doubt they also had their perplexities, and wondered 
why the wicked triumph, and sighed to God, “How long, 
0 Lord, how long?” 

And yet I cannot help wishing I had lived and died 
among them, and had not been born in times when we see 
Satan appear, not in his genuine hideousness, but as an 
angel of light. 

For of the wickedness that prevails in this Christian Rome, 
alas, who can speak! of the shameless sin, the violence, the 
pride, the mockery of sacred things. 

In the Colosseum, in the Pantheon, in the church of St. 
Sebastian, I feel an atom—but an atom in a solid, God-1 
governed world, where truth is mightiest; insignificant in 
myself as the little mosses which flutter on these ancient 
stones; but yet a little moss on a great rock which cannot 
be shaken—the rock of God’s providence and love. In the 
busy city, I feel tossed hither and thither on a sea which 
seems to rage and heave at its own wild will, without aim 
or meaning—a sea of human passion. Among the ruins, I 
commune with the spirits of our great and holy dead, who 
live unto God. At the exhibition of the sacred relics, my 
heart is drawn down to the mere perishable dust, decorated 
with the miserable pomps of the little men of the day. 



THE SCBONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


153 


And then I return to the convent and reproach myself 
for censoriousness, and unbelief, and pride, and try to re¬ 
member that the benefits of these ceremonies and 
exhibitions are only to be understood by faith, and are not 
not to be judged by inward feeling, or even by their moral 
results. 

The church, the holy father, solemnly declare, that par¬ 
dons and blessings incalculable, to ourselves and others, 
flow from so many paternosters and aves recited at certain 
altars, or from seeing the Veronica or the other relics. I 
have performed the acts, and I must at my peril believe in 
the efficacy. 

But Brother Martin and I are often sorely discouraged 
at the wickedness we see and hear around us. A few days 
since he was at a feast with several prelates and great men 
of the church, and the fashion among them seemed io be 
to jest at all that is most sacred. Some avowed their dis¬ 
belief in one portion of the faith, and some in others; but 
all in a light and laughing way, as if it mattered little to 
any of them. One present related how they sometimes 
substituted the words panis es , et panis manebis in the 
mass, instead of the words of consecration, and then amused 
themselves with watching the people adore what was, after 
all, no consecrated host, but a mere piece of bread. 

The Romans themselves we have heard declare, that if 
there be a hell, Rome is built over it. They have a 
couplet: 

“ Vivere qui sancte vultis, discedite Roma: 

Omnia liic esse licent, non licet esse probum.”* 

Oh Rome! in sacredness as Jerusalem, in wickedness as 
Babylon, how bitter is the conflict that breaks forth in the 
heart at seeing holy places and holy character thus dis¬ 
joined ! How overwhelming the doubts that rush back on 
the spirit again and again, as to the very existence of holi¬ 
ness or truth in the universe, when we behold the deeds of 
Satan prevailing in the very metropolis of the kingdom of 
God! 

Rome, August. 

Mechanically, we continue to go through every detail 

*[“ Ye who would live holily, depart from Rome: all things are 
allowed here, except to be upright.”] 



154 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


of the prescribed round of devotions, believing against ex- 
perience, and hoping against hope. 

To-day Brother Martin went to accomplish the ascent of 
the Santa Scala—the holy staircase—which once, they say, 
formed part of Pilate’s house. I had crept up the sacred 
steps before, and stood watching him as, on his knees, he 
slowly mounted step after step of the hard stone, worn into 
hollows by the knees of penitents and pilgrims. An indul¬ 
gence for a thousand years—indulgence from penance—is 
attached to this act of devotion. Patiently he crept half¬ 
way up the staircase, when, to my amazement, he suddenly 
stood erect, lifted his face heavenward, and, in another 
moment, turned and walked slowly down again. 

He seemed absorbed in thought when he rejoined me; 
and it was not until some time afterward that he told me 
the meaning of this sudden abandonment of his purpose. 

He stated that, as he was toiling up, a voice, as if from 
heaven, seemed to whisper to him the old, well-known 
words, which had been his battle-cry in so many a victori¬ 
ous combat, “ The just shall live hy faith.” 

He seemed awakened, as if from a nightmare, and re¬ 
stored to himself. He dared not creep up another step; 
but, rising from his knees, he stood upright, like a man 
suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and, with the firm 
step of a freeman, he descended the staircase and walked 
from the place. 


August, 1511. 

To-night there has been an assassination. A corpse 
was found near our convent gates, pierced with many 
wounds. But no one seems to think much of it. Such 
things are constantly occurring, they say; and the only in¬ 
terest seems to be as to the nature of the quarrel which led 
to it. 

“A prelate is mixed up with it,” the monks whisper; 
“ one of the late pope’s family. It will not be investigated. ” 

But these crimes of passion seem to me comprehensible 
and excusable, compared with the spirit of levity and 
mockery which pervades all classes. In such acts of revenge 
yon see human nature in ruins; yet in the ruins you can 
trace something of the ancient dignity. But in this jest¬ 
ing, scornful spirit, which mocks at sacredness in the 
service of God, at virtue in women, and at truth and honor 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


155 


in men, all traces of God’s image seem crushed and trodden 
into shapeless, incoherent dust. 

From such thoughts I often take refuge in the Cam- 
pagna, and feel a refreshment in its desolate spaces, its 
solitary wastes, its traces of material ruin. 

The ruins of empires and of imperial edifices do not d eA 
press me. The immortality of the race and of the soul rises' 
grandly in contrast. In the Campagna we see the ruins of 
imperial Eome; but in Eome we see the ruin of our race 
and nature. And what shall console us for that, when the 
presence of all that Christians most venerate is powerless 
to arrest it? 

Were it not for some memories of a home at Eisenach, 
on which I dare not dwell too much, it seems at times as if 
the very thought of purity and truth would fade from my 
heart. 


Eome, August. 

Brother Martin, during the intervals of the business 
of his order, which is slowly winding its way among the 
intricacies of the Eoman courts, is turning his attention to 
the study of Hebrew, under the Eabbi Elias Levita. 

I study also with the rabbi, and have had the great 
benefit, moreover, of hearing lectures from the Byzantine 
Greek professor, Argyropylos. 

Two altogether new worlds seem to open to me through 
these men, one in the far distances of time, and the other 
of space. 

The rabbi, one of the race which is a by-word and a 
scorn among us from boyhood, to my surprise seems to 
glory in his nation and his pedigree, with a pride which 
looks down on the antiquity of our noblest lineages as mush¬ 
rooms of a day. 

I had no conception that underneath the misery and the 
obsequious demeanor of the Jews such lofty feelings existed. 
And yet, what wonder is it? Before Eome was built, 
Jerusalem was a sacred and royal city; and now that the 
empire and the people of Eome have passed for centuries, 
this nation, fallen before their prime, still exists to witness 
their fall. 

I went once to the door of their synagogue, in the Ghetto. 
There were no shrines in it, no altars, no visible symbols 
of sacred things, except the roll of the law, which was 


156 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


reverently taken out of a secret treasury and read aloud. 
Yet there seemed something sublime in this symbolizing of 
the presence of God only by a voice reading the words 
which, ages ago, he spoke to their prophets in the Holy 
Land. 

“Why have you no altar?” I asked once of one of the 
rabbis. 

“ Our altar can only be raised where our temple is built,” 
was the reply. “ Our temple can only rise in the city and 
on the hill of our God. But,” he continued, in a low, bit¬ 
ter tone, “when our altar and temple are restored, it will 
not be to offer incense to the painted image of a Hebrew 
maiden.” 

I have thought of the words often since. But were they 
not blasphemy? I must not dare recall them. 

But those Greeks! they are Christians, and yet not of 
our communion. As Argyropylos speaks, I understand 
for the first time that a church exists in the East, as ancient 
as the church of western Europe, and as extensive, which 
acknowledges the holy trinity and the creeds, but owns 
no allegiance to the holy father the pope. 

The world is much larger and older than Else or I 
thought at Eisenach. May not God’s kingdom be much 
larger than some think at Home? 

In the presence of monuments which date back to days 
before Christianity, and of men who speak the language of 
Moses, and, with slight variations, the language of Homer, 
our Germany seems in its infancy indeed. Would to God 
it were in its infancy, and that a glorious youth and prime 
may succeed, when these old, decrepit nations are worn 
out and gone! 

Yet heaven forbid that I should call Rome decrepit— 
Rome, on whose brow rests, not the perishable crown of 
earthly dominion, but the tiara of the kingdom of God. 

September. 

The mission which brought Brother Martin hither is 
nearly accomplished. We shall soon—we may at a day’s 
notice—leave Rome and return to Germany. 

And what have we gained by our pilgrimage? 

A store of indulgences beyond calculation. And knowl¬ 
edge; eyes opened to see good and evil. 

Ennobling knowledge*! glimpses into rich worlds of 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


157 


human life and thought which humble the heart in ex¬ 
panding the mind. Bitter knowledge! illusions dispelled, 
aspirations crushed. We have learned that the heart of 
Christendom is a moral plague-spot; that spiritual privi¬ 
leges and moral goodness have no kind of connection, be¬ 
cause where the former are at the highest perfection, the 
latter is at the lowest point of degradation. 

We have learned that on earth there is no place to which 
the heart can turn as a sanctuary, if by a sanctuary we 
mean not merely a refuge from the punishment of sin, but 
a place in which to grow holy. 

In one sense, Rome may, indeed, be called the sanctuary 
of the world. It seems as if half the criminals in the world 
had found a refuge here. 

When I think of Rome in future as a city of the living, 
I shall think of assassination, treachery, avarice, a spirit of 
universal mockery, which seems only the foam over an abyss 
of universal despair; mockery of all virtue, based on dis¬ 
belief in all truth. 

It is only as a city of the dead that my heart will revert 
to Rome as a holy place. She has indeed built, and built 
beautifully, the sepulchers of the prophets. 

Those hidden catacombs, where the holy dead rest, far 
under the streets of the city, too far for traffickers in sacred 
bones to disturb them, among these the imagination can 
rest, like these beatified ones, in peace. 

The spiritual life of Rome seems to be among her dead. 
Among the living all seems spiritual corruption and death. 

May God and the saints have mercy on me if I say what 
is sinful. Does not the scum necessarily rise to the sur¬ 
face? Do not acts of violence and words of mockery neces¬ 
sarily make more noise in the world than prayers? How 
do I know how many humble hearts there are in those 
countless convents there, that secretly offer acceptable in¬ 
cense to God, and keep the perpetual lamp of devotion 
burning in the sight of God? 

How do I know what deeper and better thoughts lie hid¬ 
den under that veil of levity? Only I often feel that if 
God had not made me a believer through his word, by the 
voice of Brother Martin in the Black Forest, Rome might 
too easily have made me an infidel. And it is certainly 
true, that to be a Christian at Rome as well as elsewhere, 
more than elsewhere one must breast the tide, and must 
walk by faith, and not by sight. 


158 


THE SCEONB ERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


Bnt we have performed the pilgrimage. We have con¬ 
scientiously visited all the shrines; we have recited as 
many as possible of the privileged acts of devotion, paters 
and aves, at the privileged shrine. 

Great benefits must result to us from these things. 

But benefits of what kind? Moral? How can that be? 
When shall I efface from my memory the polluting words 
and works I have seen and heard at Rome? Spiritual? 
Scarcely; if by spiritual we are to understand a devout 
jnind, joy in God, and nearness to him. When, since that 
night in the Black Forest, have I found prayer so difficult, 
doubts so overwhelming, the thought of God and heaven 
so dim, as at Rome? 

The benefits, then, that we have received, must be 
ecclesiastical, those that the church promises and dispenses. 
And what are these ecclesiastical benefits? Pardon? But 
is it not written that God gives this freely to those who 
believe on his Son? Peace? But is not that the legacy of 
the Saviour to all who love him? 

What then? Indulgences. Indulgences from what? 
From the temporal consequences of sin? Too obviously 
not these. Do the ecclesiastical indulgences save men from 
disease, and sorrow, and death? Is it, then, from the 
eternal consequences of sin? Did not the Lamb of God, 
dying for us on the cross, bear our sins there, and blot 
them out? What then remains, which the indulgences 
can deliver from? 

Penance and purgatory. What then are penance and 
purgatory? Has penance in itself no curative effect, that 
we can be healed of our sins by escaping as well as by per¬ 
forming it? Have purgatorial fires no purifying power, 
that we can be purified as much by repeating a few words 
of devotion at certain altars as by centuries of agony in the 
flames? 

All these questions rise before me from time to time, and 
I find no reply. If I mention them to my confessor, he 
says: 

“These are temptations of the devil. You must not lis¬ 
ten to them. They are vain and presumptuous questions. 
There are no keys on earth to open these doors.” 

Are there any keys on earth to lock them again, when 
once they have been opened? 

“You Germans,” others of the Italian priests say, “take 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


159 


everything with such desperate seriousness. It is probably 
owing to your long winters and the heaviness of your north¬ 
ern climate, which must, no doubt, be very depressing to 
the spirits.” 

Holy Mary! and these Italians, if life is so light a matter 
to them, will not they also have one day to take death 
“with desperate seriousness,” and judgment and eternity, 
although there will be no long winters, I suppose, and no 
north and south, to depress the spirits in that other world? 

We are going back to Germany at last. Strangely has 
the world enlarged to me since we came here. We are 
accredited pilgrims; we have performed every prescribed 
duty, and availed ourselves of every proffered privilege. 
And yet it is not because of the regret of quitting the holy 
city that our hearts are full of the gravest melancholy as 
we turn away from Rome. 

When I compare the recollections of this Rome with 
those of a home at Eisenach, I am tempted in my heart to 
feel as if Germany, and not Rome, were the holy place, 
and our pilgrimage were beginning instead of ending, as we 
turn our faces northward. 

EVA’s STORY. 

Cistercian Convent, Nimptschen, 1511 . 

Life cannot at the utmost last very long, although at 
seventeen we may be tempted to think the way between us 
and heaven interminable. 

Eor the convent is certainly not heaven; I never expected 
it would be. It is not nearly so much like heaven, I think, 
as Aunt Cotta’s home; because love seems to me to be the 
essential joy of heaven, and there is more love in that home 
than here. 

I am not at all disappointed. I did not expect a haven 
of rest, but only a sphere where I might serve God better, 
and, at all events, not be a burden on dear Aunt Cotta. 
For I feel sure Uncle Cotta will become blind; and they 
have so much difficulty to struggle on as it is. 

And the world is full of dangers for a young orphan girl 
like me; and I am afraid they might want me to marry 
some one, which I never could. 

I have no doubt God will give me some work to do for 
him here, and that is all the happiness I look for. Not 


160 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMIL Y. 


that I think there are not other kinds of happiness in the 
world which are not wrong; but they are not for me. 

I shall never think it was wrong to love them all at 
Eisenach as much as I did, and do, whatever the confessor 
may say. I shall be better all my life, and all the life be¬ 
yond, I believe, for the love God gave them for me, and 
me for them, and for having known Cousin Fritz. I wish 
very much he would write to me; and sometimes I think 
I will write to him. I feel sure it would do us both good. 
He always said it did him good to talk and read the dear 
old Latin hymns with me; and I know they never seemed 
more real and true than when I sang them to him. But 
the father confessor says it would be exceedingly perilous 
for our souls to hold such a correspondence; and he asked 
me if I did not think more of my cousin than of the hymns 
when I sang them to him, which, he says, would have been 
a great sin. I am sure I cannot tell exactly how the 
thoughts were balanced, or from what source each drop of 
pleasure flowed. It was all blended together. It was joy 
to sing the hymns, and it was joy for Fritz to like to hear 
them; and where one joy overflowed into the other I can¬ 
not tell. I believe God gave me both; and I do not see 
that I need care to divide one from the other. Who cares, 
when the Elbe is flowing past its willows and oaks at 
Wittenberg, which part of its waters was dissolved by the 
sun from the pure snows on the mountains, and which came 
trickling from some little humble spring on the sandy 
plains? Both springs and snows came originally from the 
clouds above; and both, as they flow blended on together, 
make the grass spring and the leaf-buds swell, and all the 
world rejoice. 

The heart with which we love each other and with which 
we love God, is it not the same? only God is all good, and 
we are all his, therefore we should love him best. I think 
I do, or I should be more desolate here than I am, away 
from all but him. 

That is what I understand by my “ Theologia Germanica,” 
which Else does not like. I begin with my father’s legacy 
—“ God so loved the world that he gave his Son;” and then 
I think of the crucifix, and of the love of Him who died 
for us; and, in the light of these, I love to read in my book 
of Him who is the Supreme Goodness, whose will Is our 
rest, and who is himself the joy of all our joys, and our 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


161 


joy when we have no other joy. The things I do not com¬ 
prehend in the hook, I leave, like so many other things. I 
am but a poor girl of seventeen, and how can I expect to 
understand everything? Only I never let the things I do 
not understand perplex me about those 1 do. 

Therefore, when my confessor told me to examine my 
heart, and see if there were not wrong and idolatrous 
thoughts mixed up with my love for them all at Eisenach, 
I said at once, looking up at him: 

“Yes, father. I did not love them half enough, for all 
their love to me.” 

I think he must have been satisfied; for although he 
looked perplexed, he did not ask me any more questions. 

I feel very sorry for many of the nuns, especially for the 
old nuns. They seem to me like children, and yet not 
childlike. The merest trifles appear to excite or trouble 
them. They speak of the convent as if it were the world, 
and of the world as if it were hell. It is a childhood with 
no hope, no youth and womauhood before it. It reminds 
me of the stunted oaks we passed on Duben Heath, between 
Wittenberg and Leipsic, which will never be full-grown, 
and yet are not saplings. 

Then there is one, Sister Beatrice, whom the nuns seem 
to think very inferior to themselves, because they say she 
was forced into the convent by her relatives, to prevent her 
marrying some one they did not like, and could never be 
induced to take the vows until her lover died, which, they 
say, is hardly worthy of the name of a vocation at all. 

She does not seem to think so either, but moves about in 
a subdued, broken-spirited way, as if she felt herself a 
creature belonging neither to the church nor to the world. 

The other evening she had been on an errand for the 
prioress through the snow, and returned blue with cold. 
She had made some mistake in the message, and was ordered 
at once, with contemptuous words, to her cell, to finish a 
penance by reciting certain prayers. 

I could not help following her. When I found her, she 
was sitting on her pallet shivering, with the prayer-book 
before her. I crept into the cell, and, sitting down beside 
her, began to chafe her poor icy hands. 

At first she tried to withdraw them, murmuring that she 
had a penance to perform; and then her eyes wandered 
from the book to mine. She gazed wonderingly at me for 
some moments, and then she burst into tears, and said: 


162 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMIL Y. 


“Oh, do not do that! It makes me think of the nursery 
at home. And my mother is dead; all are dead, and I 
cannot die.” 

She let me put my arms round her, however; and, in 
faint, broken words, the whole history came out. 

“I am not here from choice,” she said. “I should never 
have been here if my mother had not died; and I should 
never have taken the vows if he had not died, whatever 
they had done to me; for we were betrothed, and we had 
vowed before God we would be true to each other till death. 
And why is. not one vow as good as another? When they 
told me he was dead, I took the vows—or, at least, I let 
them put the veil on me, and said the words as I was told, 
after the priest; for I did not care what I did. And so I 
am a nun. I have no wish now to be anything else. But 
it will do me no good to be a nun, for I loved Eberhard 
first, and I loved him best; and now that he is dead, I love 
no one, and have no hope in heaven or earth. I try, in¬ 
deed, not to think of him, because they say that is sin; but 
I cannot think of happiness without him, if I try forever.” 

I said, “I do not think it is wrong for you to think of 
him.” 

Her face brightened for an instant, and then she shook 
her head, and said: 

“Ah, you are a child: you are an angel. You do not 
know.” But then she began to weep again, but more 
quietly. “I wish you had seen him; then you would 
understand better. It was not wrong for me to love him 
once; and he was so different from every one else—so true 
and gentle and so brave.” 

I listened while she continued to speak of him; and at 
last, looking wistfully at me, she said, in a low, timid voice: 
“I cannot help trusting you.” And she drew from inside 
a fold of her robe a little piece of yellow paper, with a few 
words written on it, in pale, faded ink, and a lock of brown 
hair. 

“Do you think it is very wrong?” she asked. “I have 
never told the confessor, because I am not quite sure if it is 
a sin to keep it; and I am quite sure the sisters would take 
it from me if they knew. Do you think it is wrong?” 

The words were very simple—expressions of unchange¬ 
able affection, and a prayer that God would bless her and 
keep them for each other till better times. 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


163 


I could not speak, I felt so sorry; and she murmured, 
nervously taking her poor treasures from my hands, “You 
do not think it right. But you will not tell? Perhaps one 
day I shall he better, and he able to give them up; but not 
yet. I have nothing else.” 

Then I tried to tell her that she had something else; 
that God loved her and had pity on her, and that perhaps 
he was only answering the prayer of her betrothed, and 
keeping them in his blessed keeping until they should meet 
in better times. At length she seemed to take comfort; 
and I knelt down with her, and we said together the pray¬ 
ers she had been commanded to recite. 

When I rose, she said thoughtfully, “You seem to pray 
as if some one in heaven really listened and cared.” 

“Yes,” I said; “God does listen and care.” 

“Even to me?” she asked; “even for me? Will He not 
despise me, like the holy sisterhood?” 

“ He scorneth no one; and they say the lowest are nearest 
Him, the highest.” 

“I can certainly never be anything but the lowest,” she 
said. “ It is fit no one here should think much of me, for 
I have only given the refuse of my life to God. And be¬ 
sides, I had never much power to think; and the little I 
had seems gone since Eberhard died. I had only a little 
power to love; and I thought that was dead. But since 
you came, I begin to think I might yet love a little.” 

As I left the cell she called me back. 

“What shall I do when my thoughts wander, as they 
always do in the long prayers?” she asked. 

“Slake shorter prayers, I think, oftener,” I said. “I 
think that would please God as much.” 


August, 1511. 

The months pass on very much the same here; but I do 
not find them monotonous. I am permitted by the prioress 
to wait on the sick, and also often to teach the younger 
novices. This little world grows larger to me every week. 
It is a world of human hearts, and what a world there is in 
every heart! 

For instance, Aunt Agnes! I begin now to know her. 
All the sisterhood look up to her as almost a saint already. 
But I do not believe she thinks so herself. For many 
months after I entered the cloister she scarcely seemed to 


164 THE schonb erg-cotta family. 

notice me; but last week she brought herself into a low 
fever by the additional fasts and severities she has been im¬ 
posing on herself lately. It was my night to watch in the 
infirmary when she became ill. 

At first she seemed to shrink from receiving anything at 
my hands. 

“Can they not send any one else?” she asked, sternly. 

“It is appointed to me,” I said, “in the order of the 
sisterhood.” 

She bowed her head, and made no further opposition to 
my nursing her. And it was very sweet to me, because, in 
spite of all the settled, grave impressiveness of her counte¬ 
nance I could not help seeing something there which re¬ 
called dear Aunt Cotta. 

She spoke to me very little; but I felt her large deep eyes 
following me as I stirred little concoctions from herbs on 
the fire, or crept softly about the room. Toward morning 
she said, “Child, you are tired—come and lie down;” and 
she pointed to a little bed beside her own. 

Peremptory as were the words, there was a tone in them 
different from the usual metallic firmness in her voice— 
which froze Else’s heart—a tremulousness which was almost 
tender. I could not resist the command, especially as she 
said she felt much better; and in a few minutes, bad nurse 
that I was, I fell asleep. 

How long I slept I know not, but I was awakened by a 
slight movement in the room, and looking up, I saw Aunt 
Agnes’ bed empty. In my first moments of bewildered 
terror I thought of arousing the sisterhood, when I noticed 
that the door of the infirmary which opened on the gallery 
of the chapel was slightly ajar. Softly I stole toward it, 
and there, in the front of the gallery, wrapped in a sheet, 
knelt Aunt Agnes, looking more than ever like the picture 
of death which she always recalled to Else. Her lips, 
which were as bloodless as her face, moved with passionate 
rapidity; her thin hands feebly counted the black beads of 
her rosary; and her eyes were fixed on a picture of the 
Mater Dolorosa with the seven swords in her heart, over 
one of the altars. There was no impassiveness in the poor 
sharp features and trembling lips then. Her whole soul 
seemed going forth in an agonized appeal to that pierced 
heart; and I heard her murmur, “In vain? holy Virgin, 
plead for me! it has been all in vain. The flesh is no more 


THE SCHOHB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 165 

dead in me than the first day. That child’s face and voice 
stir my heart more than all thy sorrows. This feeble tie 
of nature has more power in me than all the relationships 
of the heavenly city. It has been in vain—all, all in vain. 
I cannot quench the fires of earth in my heart.” 

I scarcely ventured to interrupt her, but as she bowed 
her head on her hands, and fell almost prostrate on the floor 
of the chapel, while her whole frame heaved with repressed 
sobs, I went forward and gently lifted her, saying, “ Sister 
Agnes, I am responsible for the sick to-night. You must 
come back.” 

She did not resist. A shudder passed through her; then 
the old stony look came back to her face, more rigid than 
ever, and she suffered me to wrap her up in the bed, and 
give her a warm drink. 

I do not know whether she suspects that I heard her. 
She is more reserved with me than ever; but to me those 
resolute, fixed features, and that hard, firm voice, will 
never more be what they were before. 

No wonder that the admiration of the sisterhood has no 
power to elate Aunt Agnes, and that their wish to elect her 
sub-prioress had no seduction for her. She is striving in 
her inmost soul after an ideal, which, could she reach it, 
what would sho be? 

As regards all human feeling and earthly life, dead! 

And just as she hoped this was attained, a voice—a poor 
friendly child’s voice—falls on her ear, and she finds that 
what she deemed death was only a dream in an undisturbed 
slumber, and that the whole work has to begin again. It 
is a fearful combat, this concentrating all the powers of life 
on producing death in life. 

Can this be what God means? 

Thank God, at least, that my vocation is lower. The 
humbling work in the infirmary, and the trials of temper 
in the school of the novices, seem to teach me more, and 
to make me feel that I am nothing and have nothing in 
myself, more than all my efforts to feel nothing. 

My “ Theologia” says indeed, that true self-abnegation is 
freedom; and freedom cannot be attained until we are 
above the fear of punishment or the hope of reward. Else 
cannot bear this; and when I spoke of it the other day to 
poor Sister Beatrice, she said it bewildered her poor brain 
altogether to think of it. But I do not take it in that 


166 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


sense. I think it must mean that love is its own reward; 
and grieving Him we love, who has so loved us, our worst 
punishment; and that seems to me quite true. 


PART XI. 
else’s story. 

Wittenberg, June, 1512. 

Our Eva seems happy at the convent. She has taken 
the vows, and is now finally Sister Ave. She has also sent 
us some eye-water for the father. But in spite of all we 
can do his sight seems failing. 

In some way or other I think my father’s loss of sight 
has brought blessing to the family. 

Our grandmother, who is very feeble now, and seldom 
leaves her chair by the stove, has become much more toler¬ 
ant of his schemes since there is no chance of their being 
carried out, and listens with remarkable patience to his 
statements of the wonders he would have achieved had his 
sight only been continued a few years. 

Nor does the father himself seem as much dejected as 
one would have expected. 

When I was comforting him to-day by saying how much 
less anxious our mother looks, he replied: 

‘‘Yes, my child, the prseter pluperfect subjunctive is a 
more comfortable tense to live in than the future sub¬ 
junctive, for any length of time.” 

I look perplexed, and he explained: 

“It is easier, when once one has made up one’s mind to 
it, to say, ‘Had I had this I might have done that,’ than, 
‘If I can have this I shall do that,’ at least it is easier to 
the anxious and excitable feminine mind.” 

“But to you, father?” 

“To me it is a consolation at last to be appreciated. 
Even your grandmother understands at length how great 
the results would have been if I could only have had eye¬ 
sight to perfect that last invention for using steam to draw 
water.” 

Our grandmother must certainly have put great restraint 



TEE SCEONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


167 


on her usually frank expression of opinion, if she has led 
our father to believe she had any confidence in that last 
scheme; for, I must confess, that of all our father’s inven¬ 
tions and discoveries, the whole family consider this idea 
about the steam the wildest and most impracticable of all. 
The secret of perpetual motion might, no doubt, be dis¬ 
covered, and a clock be constructed which would never 
need winding up—I see no great difficulty in that. It 
might be quite possible to transmute lead into gold, or iron 
into silver, if one could find exactly the right proportions 
of heat. My father has explained all that to me quite 
clearly. The elixir which would prolong life indefinitely 
seems to me a little more difficult; but this notion of 
pumping up water by means of the steam which issues 
from boiling water and disperses in an instant, we all agree 
in thinking quite visionary, and out of the question; so 
that it is, perhaps, as well our poor father should not have 
thrown away any more expense or time on it. Besides, we 
had already nad two or three explosions from his experi¬ 
ments; and some of the neighbors were beginning to say 
very unpleasant things about the black art, and witchcraft; 
so that on the whole, no doubt, it is all for the best. 

I would not, however, for the world, have hinted this to 
him; therefore I only replied, evasively: 

“Our grandmother has indeed been much gentler and 
more placid lately.” 

“It is not only that,” he rejoined; “she has an intelli¬ 
gence far superior to that of most women, she comprehends. 
And then,” he continued, “I am not without hopes that 
that young nobleman, Ulrich von Gersdorf, who comes 
here so frequently and asks about Eva, may one day carry 
out my schemes. He and Chriemhild begin to enter into 
the idea quite intelligently. Besides, there is Master 
Reichenbach, the rich merchant to whom your Aunt Cotta 
introduced us; he has money enough to carry things out 
in the best style. He certainly does not promise much, 
but he is an intelligent listener, and that is a great step. 
Gottfried Reichenbach is an enlightened man for a mer¬ 
chant, although he is, perhaps, rather slow in comprehen¬ 
sion, and a little over-cautious.” 

“He is not over-cautious in his alms, father,” I said; 
“at least Dr. Martin Luther says so.” 

“Perhaps not,” he said. “On the whole, certainly, the 


168 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


citizens of Wittenberg are very superior to those of Eisen¬ 
ach, who were incredulous and dull to the last degree. It 
will be a great thing if Reiclienbach and Yon Gersdorf take 
up this invention. Reiehenbach can introduce it at once 
among the patrician families of the great cities with whom 
he is connected, and Yon Gersdorf would promote it among 
his kindred knights. It would not, indeed, be such an ad¬ 
vantage to our family as if Pollux and Christopher, or our 
poor Fritz, had carried it out. But never mind, Else, my 
child, we are children of Adam before we are Cottas. We 
must think not only of the family, but of the world.” 

Master Reiehenbach, indeed, may take a genuine interest 
in my father’s plans, but I have suspicions of Ulrich von 
Gersdorf. He seems to me far more interested in Chriem- 
hild’s embroidery than in our father’s steam-pump; and 
although he continues to talk of Eva as if he thought her 
an angel, he certainly sometimes looks at Chriemhild as if 
he thought her a creature as interesting. 

I do not like such transitions; and, besides, his conver¬ 
sation is so very different, in my opinion, from Master 
Reichenbach’s. Ulrich von Gersdorf has no experience of 
life beyond a boar-hunt, a combat with some rival knights, 
or a foray on some defenseless merchants. His life has 
been passed in the castle of an uncle of his in the Thurin- 
gian Forest; and I cannot wonder that Chriemhild listens, 
with a glow of interest on her face, as she sits with her eyes 
bent on her embroidery, to his stories of ambushes and 
daring surprises. But to me this life seems rude and law¬ 
less. Ulriches uncle was unmarried; and they had no ladies 
in the castle except a widowed aunt of Ulrich, who seems 
to be as proud as Lucifer, and especially to pride herself on 
being able to wear pearls and velvet, which no burgher’s 
wife may appear in. 

Ulrich’s mother died early. I fancy she was gentler and 
of a truer nobleness. He says the only book they have in 
the castle is an old illuminated Missal which belonged to 
her. He has another aunt, Beatrice, who is in the convent 
at Nimptschen with our Eva. They sent her there to pre¬ 
vent her marrying the son of a family with whom they had 
an hereditary feud. I begin to feel, as Fritz used to say, 
that the life of these petty nobles is not nearly so noble as 
that of the burghers. They seem to know nothing of the 
world beyond the little district they rule by terror. They 


THE SCUONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


1 69 


have no honest way of maintaining themselves, but live by 
the hard toil of their poor oppressed peasants, and by the 
plunder of their enemies. 

Herr Reichenbach, on the other hand, is connected with 
the patrician families in the great city of Nurnberg; and 
although he does not talk much, he has histories to tell of 
painters and poets, and great events in the broad field of 
the world. Ah, I wish he had known Fritz! He likes to 
hear me talk of him. 

And then, moreover, Herr Reichenbach has much to tell 
me about Brother Martin Luther, who is at the head of the 
Eremite or Augustine convent here, and seems to me to 
be the great man of Wittenberg; at least people appear to 
like him or dislike him more than any one else here. 

October 19, 1512. 

This has been a great day at Wittenberg. Friar Martin 
Luther has been created doctor of divinity. Master Reich¬ 
enbach procured us excellent places, and we saw the degree 
conferred on him by Dr. Andrew Bodenstein of Carlstadts 

The great bell of the city churches, which only sound, 
on great occasions, pealed as if for a church festival; all the 
university authorities marched in procession through the 
streets; and after taking the vow, Friar Martin was 
solemnly invested with the doctor’s robes, hat, and ring—a 
massive gold ring presented to him by the elector. 

But the part which impressed me most was the oath, 
which Dr. Luther pronounced most solemnly, so that the 
words, in his fine clear voice, rang through the silence. 
He repeated it after Dr. Bodenstein, who is commonly called 
Carlstadt. The words in Latin, Herr Reichenbach says, 
were these (he wrote them for me to send to Eva)- 

“ Juro me veritatem evangelicam viriliter defensurum;” 
which Herr Reichenbach translated, “/ sivear vigorously 
to defend evangelical truth” 

This oath is only required at one other university besides 
Wittenberg—that of Tubingen. Dr. Luther swore it as if 
he were a knight of olden times, vowing to risk life and 
limb in some sacred cause. To me, who could not under¬ 
stand the words, his manner was more than of a warrior 
swearing on his sword than of a doctor of divinity. 

And Master Reichenbach says, “ What he has promised 
he will do.” 


170 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Chriemhild laughs at Master Reichenbach, because be 
has entered his name on the list of university students, in 
order to attend Dr. Luther’s lectures. 

“With his grave old face, and his gray hair,” she says, 
“to sit among those noisy student boys.” 

But I can see nothing laughable in it. I think it is a 
sign of something noble, for a man in the prime of life to 
be content to learn as a little child. And besides, whatever 
Chriemhild may say, if Herr Reichenbach is a little bald, 
and has a few gray hairs, it is not on account of age. 
Grown men, who think and feel in these stormy times, 
cannot be expected to have smooth faces and full curly 
locks, like Ulrich von Gersdorf. 

I am sure if I were a man twice as old as he is, there is 
nothing I should like better than to attend Dr. Luther’s 
lectures. I have heard him preach once in the city church, 
and it was quite different from any other sermon I ever 
heard. He spoke of God and Christ, and heaven and hell, 
with as much conviction and simplicity as if he had been 
pleading some cause of human wrong, or relating some 
great events which happened on earth yesterday, instead of 
reciting it like a piece of Latin grammar, as so many of 
the monks do. 

I began almost to feel as if I might at last find a religion 
that would do for me. Even Christopher was attentive. 
He said Dr. Luther called everything by such plain names 
one could not help understanding. 

We have seen him once at our house. He was so respect¬ 
ful to our grandmother, and so patient with my father, and 
he spoke so kindly of Fritz. 

Fritz has written to us, and has recommended us to take 
Dr. Martin Luther for our family confessor. He says he 
can never repay the good Dr. Luther has done to him. 
And certainly he writes more brightly and hopefully than 
he ever has since he left us, although he has, alas! "finally 
taken those dreadful, irrevocable vows. 


March, 1513. 

Dr. Luther has consented to be our confessor; and 
thank God I do believe at last I have found the religion 
which may make me, even me, love God. Dr. Luther says 
I have entirely misunderstood God and the Lord Jesus 
Christ. He seemed to understand all I have been longing 


THE SCHONBEUO-CO TTA FAMILY. 171 

for and perplexing myself about all my life, with a glance. 
When I began to falter out my confessions and difficulties 
to him, he seemed to see them all spread before him, and 
explained them all to me. He says I have been thinking 
of God as a severe judge, an exactor, a harsh creditor, 
when he is a giver, a forgiving Saviour, yea, the very foun¬ 
tain of inexpressible love. 

“God’slove,” he said, “gives in such a way that it flows 
from a father’s heart, the well-spring of all good. The 
heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious; as 
among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, ‘It comes 
from a hand we love,’ and look not so much at the gift as 
at the heart. 

“ If we will only consider him in his works, we shall learn 
that God is nothing else but pure, unutterable love, greater 
and more than any one can think. The shameful thing is, 
that the world does not regard this, nor thank him for it, 
although every day it sees before it such countless benefits 
from him; and it deserves for its ingratitude that the sun 
should not shine another moment longer, nor the grass 
grow, yet he ceases not, without a moment’s interval, to 
love us, and to do us good. Language must fail me to 
speak of his spiritual gifts. Here he pours forth for us, 
not sun and moon, nor heaven and earth, but his own 
heart, his beloved Son, so that he suffered his blood to be 
shed, and the most shameful death to be inflicted on him, 
for us wretched, wicked, thankless creatures. How, then, 
can we say anything but that God is an abyss of endless, 
unfathomable love? 

“The whole Bible,” he says, “is full of this, that we 
should not doubt, but be absolutely certain, that God is 
merciful, gracious, patient, fa ; thful, and true; who not 
only will keep his promises, but already has kept and done 
abundantly beyond what he promised, since he has given 
his own Son for our sins on the cross, that all who believe 
in him should not perish, but ha v e everlasting life. 

“Whoever believes and emoraces this,” he added, “that 
God has given his only Son to die for us poor sinners, to 
hvm it is no longer any doubt, but the most certain truth, 
that God reconciles ns to himself, and is favorable and 
heartily gracious to us. 

* Since the gospel shows us Christ the Son of God, who, 
according to the will of the Father, has offered himself up 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


m 

for us, and has satisfied for sin, the heart can no more 
doubt God’s goodness and grace—is no more affrighted, 
nor flies from God, but sets all its hope in his goodness 
and mercy.” 

“The apostles are always exhorting us,” he says, “to 
continue in the love of God, that is, that each one should 
entirely conclude in his heart that he is loved by God; and 
set before our eyes a certain proof of it, in that God has 
not spared his Son, but given him for the world, that 
through his death the world might again have life. 

“It is God’s honor and glory to give liberally. His 
nature is all pure love; so that if any one would describe 
or picture God, he must describe One who is pure love, the 
divine nature being nothing else than a furnace and glow 
of such love that it fills heaven and earth. 

“ Love is an image of God, and not a dead image, nor 
one painted on paper, but the living essence of the divine 
nature, which burns full of all goodness. 

“He is not harsh, as we are to those who have injured 
us. We withdraw our hand and close our purse; but He 
is kind to the unthankful and the evil. 

“He sees thee in thy poverty and wretchedness, and 
knows thou hast nothing to pay. Therefore He freely for¬ 
gives, and gives thee all. 

“It is not to be borne,” he said, “that Christian people 
should say, we cannot know whether God is favorable to us 
or not. On the contrary, we should learn to say, I know 
that I believe in Christ, and therefore that God is my 
gracious Father. 

“ What is the reason that God gives?” he said, one day. 
“What moves him to it? Nothing but unutterable love, 
because he delights to give and to bless. What does he 
give? Not empires merely, not a world full of silver and 
gold, not heaven and earth only, but his Son, who is as 
great as himself—that is, eternal and incomprehensible; a 
gift as infinite as the Giver, the very spring and fountain 
of all grace; yea, the possession and property of all the 
riches and treasures of God.” 

Dr. Luther said also, that the best name by which we 
can think of God is Father. “ It is a loving, sweet, deep, 
heart-touching name; for the name of father is in its 
nature full of inborn sweetness and comfort. Therefore, 
also, we must confess ourselves children of God; for by this 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 173 

name we deeply touch our God, since there is not a sweeter 
sound to the father than the voice of the child.” 

All this is wonderful to me. I scarcely dare to open my 
hand, and take this belief home to my heart. 

Is it then, indeed, thus we must think of God? Is he, 
indeed, as Dr. Luther says, ready to listen to our feeblest 
cry, ready to forgive us, and to help us? 

And if he is indeed like this, and cares what we think of 
him, how I must have grieved him all these years! 

Not a moment longer, I will not distrust Thee a moment 
longer. See, heavenly Father, I have come back! 

Gan it, indeed, be possible that God is pleased when we 
trust him—pleased when we pray, simply because he loves 
us? 

Can it indeed be true, as Dr. Luther says, that love is 
our greatest virtue; and that we please God best by being 
kind to each other, just because that is what is most like 
him? 

I am sure it is true. It is so good, it must be true. 

Then it is possible for me, even for me, to love God. 
How is it possible for me not to love him? And it is pos¬ 
sible for me, even for me, to be religious, if to be religious 
is to love God, and to do whatever we can to make those 
around us happy. 

But if this is indeed religion, it is happiness, it is free¬ 
dom—it is life! 

Why, then, are so many of the religious people I know 
of a sad countenance, as if they were bond-servants toiling 
for a hard master? 

I must ask Dr. Luther. 


April, 1513. 

I have asked Dr. Luther, and he says it is because the 
devil makes a great deal of the religion we see; that he 
pretends to be Christ, and comes and terrifies people, and 
scourges them with the remembrance of their sins, and tells 
them they must not dare to lift up their eyes to heaven; 
God is so holy, and they are so sinful. But it is all because 
he knows that if they would lift their eyes to heaven, their 
terrors would vanish, and they would see Christ there, not 
as the Judge and the hard, exacting Creditor, but as the 
pitiful, loving Saviour. 

I find it a great comfort to believe in this way in the 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


174 

devil. Has lie not been trying to teach me his religion all 
my life? And now I have found him out. He has been 
telling me lies, not about myself (Dr. Luther says he can¬ 
not paint us more sinful than we are), but lies about God. 
It helps me almost as much to hear Dr. Luther speak about 
the devil as about God—“the malignant, sad spirit,” he 
says, “who loves to make every one sad.” 

With God’s help, I will never believe him again. But 
Dr. Luther said I shall, often; that he will come again 
and malign God, and assail my peace in so many ways, that 
it will be long before I learn to know him. 

I shuddered when he told me this; but then he reassured 
me, by telling me a beautiful story, which, he said, was 
from the Bible. It was about a Good Shepherd and silly, 
wandering sheep, and a wolf who sought to devour them. 
“All the care of the Shepherd,” he said, “is in the ten- 
derest way to attract the sheep to keep close to him; and 
when they wander, he goes and seeks them, takes them on 
his shoulder, and carries them safe home. All our wisdom,” 
he says, “is to keep always near this Good Shepherd, who 
is Christ, and to listen to his voice.” 

I know the Lord Jesus Christ is called the Good Shep¬ 
herd. I have seen the picture of him carrying the lamb on 
his shoulder. But until Dr. Luther explained it to me, 
I thought it meant that he was the Lord and Owner of all 
the world, who are his flock. But I never thought that he 
cared for me as his sheep, sought me, called me, watched 
me, even me, day by day. 

Other people, no doubt, have understood all this before. 
And yet, if so, why do not the monks preach of it? Why 
should Aunt Agnes serve him in the convent by penances 
and self-tormentings, instead of serving him in the world 
by being kind and helping all around. Why should our 
dear, gentle mother, have such sad, self-reproachful 
thoughts, and feel as if she and our family were under a 
curse? 

Dr. Luther said that Christ was “made a curse for us,” 
that he, the unspotted and undefiled Lamb of God, bore 
the curse for us on the cross; and that we, believing in 
him, are not under the curse, but under the blessing—that 
were a blessed. 

This, then, is what the crucifix and the Agnus Dei mean. 

Doubtless many around me have understood all this long 
ago. I am sure, at least, that our Eva understood it. 


1HE SCHON BERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


175 


But what inexpressible joy for me, as I sit at my em¬ 
broidery in the garden, to look up through the apple blos¬ 
soms and the fluttering leaves, and to see God’s love there; 
to listen to the thrush that has built his nest among them, 
and feel God’s love, who cares for the birds, in every note 
that swells his little throat; to look beyond to the bright 
blue depths of the sky, and feel they are a canopy of bless¬ 
ing—the roof of the house of my Father; that if clouds 
pass over, it is the unchangeable light they veil; that, 
even when the day itself passes, I shall see that the night 
itself only unveils new worlds of light; and to know that if 
I could unwrap fold after fold of God’s universe, I should 
only unfold more and more blessing, and see deeper and 
deeper into the love which is at the heart of all. 

And then what joy again to turn to my embroidery, 
and, as my fingers busily ply the needle, to think: 

“This is to help my father and mother; this, even this, 
is a little work of love. And as I sit and stitch, God is 
pleased with me, and with what I am doing. He gives me 
this to do, as much as he gives the priests to pray, and Dr. 
Luther to preach. I am serving Him, and he is near me 
in my little corner of the world, and is pleased with me— 
even with me!” 

Oh, Fritz and Eva if you had both known this, need you 
have left us to go and serve God so far away? 

Have I indeed, like St. Christopher, found my bank of 
the river, where I can serve my Saviour by helping all the 
pilgrims I can? 

Better, better than St. Christopher; for do I not know 
the voice that calls to me: 

“Else! Else! do this for me?” 

And now I do not feel at all afraid to grow old, which is 
a great relief, as I am already six-and-twenty, and the chil¬ 
dren think me nearly as old as our mother. For what is 
growing old, if Dr. Martin Luther is indeed right (and I 
am sure he is), but growing daily nearer God, and his holy, 
happy house! Dr. Luther says our Saviour called heaven 
his Father’s house. 

Not that I wish to leave this world. While God wills we 
should stay here, and is with us, is it not homelike enough 
for us? 


May, 1513. 

This morning I was busy making a favorite pudding of 


176 


THE SGHONBERO-COTTA FAMIL 7. 


the father’s, when I heard Herr Reichenbach’s voice at the 
door. He went into the dwelling-room, and soon after¬ 
ward Chriemhild, Atlantis, and Thekla, invaded the 
kitchen. 

“Herr Reichenbach wishes to have a consultation,” said 
Chriemhild, “and we are sent away.” 

I felt anxious for a moment. It seemed like the old 
Eisenach days; but since we have been at Wittenberg we 
have never gone into debt; so that, after thinking a little, 
I was reassured. The children were full of speculations 
what it would be about. Chriemhild thought it was some 
affair of state, because she had seen him in close confabula¬ 
tion with Ulrich von Gersdorf as he came up the street, 
and they had probably been discussing some question 
about the privileges of the nobles and burghers. 

Atlantis believed it had something to do with Dr. Martin 
Luther, because Herr Reichenbach had presented the 
mother with a new pamphlet of the doctor’s, on entering 
the room. 

Thekla was sure it was at last the opportunity to make use 
of one of the father’s discoveries, whether the perpetual 
clock, or the transmutation of metals, or the steam-pump, 
she could not tell; but she was persuaded it was something 
which was to make our fortunes at last, because Herr 
Reichenbach looked so very much in earnest, and was so 
very respectful to our father. 

They had not much time to discuss their various theories 
when we heard Herr Reichenbach’s step pass hurriedly 
through the passage, and the door closed hastily after him. 

“Do you call that a consultation?” said Chriemhild, 
scornfully; “he has not been here ten minutes.” 

The next instant our mother appeared, looking very pale, 
and with her voice trembling as she said: 

“Else, my child, we want you.” 

“You are to know first, Else,” said the children. 
“Well, it is only fair; you are a dear good eldest sister, 
and will be sure to tell us.” 

I scarcely knew why, but my fingers did not seem as 
much under control as usual, and it was some moments be¬ 
fore I could put the finishing stroke to my pudding, wash 
my hands, pull down the white sleeves to my wrists, and 
join them in the dwelling-room, so that my mother re¬ 
appeared with an impatience very unusual for her, and led 
me in herself. 


THE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 177 

“Else, darling, come here,” said my father. And when 
he felt my hand in his, he added, “Herr Reichenbach left 
a message for thee. Other parents often decide these mat¬ 
ters for their children, but thy mother and I wish to leave 
the matter to thee. Couldst thou be his wife?” 

The question took me by surprise, and I could only say: 

“ Can it be possible he thinks of me?” 

“I see nothing impossible in that, my Else,” said my 
father; “but at all events Herr Keichenbach has placed 
that beyond a doubt. The question now is whether our 
Else can think of him.” 

I could not say anything. 

“ Think well before you reject him,” said my father; “he 
is a good and generous man, he desires no portion with 
thee, and he says thou woulclst be a portion for a king; 
and I must say he is very intelligent and well-informed, 
and can appreciate scientific inventions as few men in these 
days can.” 

“1 do not wish him to be dismissed,” I faltered. 

But my tender-hearted mother said, laying my head on 
her shoulder: 

“Yet think well, darling, before you accept him. We 
are not poor now, and we need no stranger’s wealth to make 
us happy. Heaven forbid that our child should sacrifice 
herself for us. Herr Reichenbach is, no doubt, a good and 
wise man, but I know well a young maiden’s fancy. He is 
little, I know—not tall and stalwart, like our Fritz and 
Christopher; and he is a little bald, and he is not very 
young, and rather grave and silent, and young girls-” 

“But, mother,” I said, “I am not a young girl, I am six- 
and-twenty; and T do not think Herr Reichenbach old, and 
I never noticed that he was bald, and I am sure to me he is 
not silent.” 

“That will do, Else,” said the grandmother, laughing 
from her corner by the stove. “Son and daughter, let 
these two settle it together. They will arrange matters 
better than we shall for them.” 

And in the evening Herr Reichenbach came again, and 
everything was arranged. 

“And that is what the consultation was about!” said the 
children, not without some disappointment. “It seems 
such an ordinary thing,” said Atlantis, “we are so used to 
seeing Herr Reichenbach. He comes almost every day.” 


178 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY,\ 


“I do not see that that is any objection,” said Chriem- 
hild; “but it seems hardly like being married, only just 
to cross the street. His house is just opposite.” 

“But it is a great deal prettier than ours,” said Thekla. 
“I like Herr Reichenbach; no one ever took such an inter¬ 
est in my drawings as he does. He tells me where they are 
wrong, and shows me how to make them right, as if he 
really felt it of some consequence; which it is, you know, 
Else, because one day I mean to embroider and help the 
family, like you. And no one was ever so kind to Nix as 
he is. He took the dog on his knee the other day, and 
drew out a splinter which had lamed him, which Nix would 
not let any one else do but me. Nix is very fond of Herr 
Reichenbach, and so am I. He is much wiser, I think, 
than Ulrich, who teases Nix, and pretends never to know 
my cats from my cows; and I do not see that he is much 
older; besides, I could not bear our Else to live a step 
further off.” And Thekla climbed on my lap and kissed 
me, while Nix stood on his hind-legs aud barked, evidently 
thinking it was a great occasion. So that two of the family 
at least have given their consent. 

But none of the family know yet what Herr Reichen¬ 
bach said to me when we stood for a few minutes by the 
window, before he left this evening. He said: 

“Else, it is God who gives me this joy. Ever since the 
evening when you all arrived at Wittenberg, and I saw you 
tenderly helping the aged and directing the young ones, 
and never flurried in all the bustle, but always at leisure to 
tha'nk any one for any little kindness, or to help any one 
out of any little difficulty, I thought you were the light of 
this home, and I prayed God one day to make you the light 
of mine.” 

Ah! that shows how love veils people’s faults; but he 
did not know Fritz, and not much of Eva. They were the 
true sunshine of our home. However, at all events, with 
God’s help, I will do my very best to make Herr Reichen- 
bacli’s home bright. 

But the best of all is, I am not afraid to accept this bless¬ 
ing. I believe it is God, out of his inexpressible love, as 
Dr. Luther says, who has given it me, and I am not afraid 
he will think me too happy. 

Before I had Dr. Luther for my confessor, I should never 
have known if it was to be a blessing or a curse; but now X 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 179 

am not afraid. A chain seems to have dropped from my 
heart, and a veil from my eyes, and I can call God Father, 
and take everything fearlessly from him. 

And I know Gottfried feels the same. Since I never had 
a vocation for the higher religions life, it is an especial 
mercy for me to have found a religion which enables a poor 
everyday maiden in the world to love God and to seek his 
blessing. 


June. 

Our mother has been full of little tender apologies to me 
this week, for having called Gottfried (Herr Reichenbach 
says I am to call him so) old, and bald, and little, and 
grave. 

“You know, darling, I only meant I did not want you to 
accept him for our sakes. And after all, as you say, he is 
scarcely bald; and they say all men who think much lose 
their hair early; and I am sure it is no advantage to be 
always talking; and every one cannot be as tall as our Fritz 
and Christopher.” 

“And after all, dear mother,” said the grandmother, 
“Else did not choose Herr Reichenbach for your sakes; but 
are you quite sure he did not choose Else for her father’s 
sake? He was always so interested in the steam-pump!” 

My mother and I are much cheered by seeing the quiet 
influence Herr Reichenbach seems to have over Christo¬ 
pher, whose companions and late hours have often caused 
us anxiety lately. Christopher is not distrustful of him, 
because he is no priest, and no great favorer of monks and 
convents; and he is not so much afraid of Christopher as 
we timid, anxious women, were beginning to be. He 
thinks there is good metal in him; and he says the best ore 
cannot look like gold until it is fused. It is so difficult for 
us women, who have to watch from our quiet homes afar, 
to distinguish the glow of the smelting furnace from the 
glare of a conflagration. 


Wittenberg, September, 1513. 

This morning, Herr Reichenbach, Christopher, and 
Ulrich von Gersdorf (who is studying here for a time), 
came in full of excitement, from a discussion they had been 
hearing between Dr. Luther and some of the doctors and 
professors of Erfurt. 


180 


THE SCIIONBEllG-COTTA FAMILY. 


I do not know that I quite clearly understand what it 
was about; but they seem to think it of great importance. 

Our house has become rather a gathering-place of late; 
partly, I think, on account of my father’s blindness, which 
always insures that there will be some one at home. 

It seems that Dr. Luther attacks the old methods of 
teaching in the universities, which makes the older profes¬ 
sors look on him as a dangerous innovator, while the young 
delight in him as a hero fighting their battles. And yet 
the authorities Dr. Luther wishes to reinstate are older 
than those he attacks. He demands that nothing shall be 
received as the standard of theological truth except the 
Holy Scriptures. I cannot understand why there should 
be so much conflict about this, because I thought all we 
believed was founded on the Holy Scriptures. I suppose it 
is not; but if not, on whose authority? I must ask Gott¬ 
fried this one day when we are alone. 

The discussion to-day was between Dr. Andrew Boden- 
stein, archdeacon of Wittenberg, Dr. Luther, and Dr. 
Todocus of Eisenach, called Trutvetter, his old teacher. 
Dr. Carlstadt himself, they said, seemed quite convinced; 
and Dr. Todocus was silenced, and is going back to Erfurt. 

The enthusiasm of the students is great. The great 
point of Dr. Luther’s attack seems to be Aristotle, who 
was a heathen Greek. I cannot think why these church 
doctors should be so eager to defend him; but Herr Beich- 
enbach says all the teaching of the schools and all the doc¬ 
trine of indulgences are in some way founded on this 
Aristotle, and that Dr. Luther wants to clear away every¬ 
thing which stands as a screen between the students and 
the Bible. 

Ulrich von Gersdorf said that our doctor debates like his 
uncle, Franz von Sukingen, fights. He stands like a rock 
on some point he feels firm on; and then, when his op¬ 
ponents are weary of trying to move him, he rushes sud¬ 
denly down on them, and sweeps them away like a torrent. 

“ But his great secret seems to be,” remarked Christo¬ 
pher, “ that he believes every word he says. He speaks like 
other men—works as if every stroke were to tell.” 

And Gottfried said, quietly, “He is fighting the battle 
of God with the scribes and Pharisees of our days; and 
whether he triumph or perish, the battle will be won. It 
is a battle, not merely against falsehood, but for truth, to 
keep a position he has won.” 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


181 


“When I hear him,” said Ulrich, I wish my student days 
over, and long to be in the old castle in the Thuringian 
forest, to give everything good there a new impulse. . He 
makes me feel the way to fight the world’s great battles is 
for each to conquer the enemies of God in his own heart 
and home. He speaks of Aristotle and Augustine; but he 
makes me think of the sloth and tyranny in the castle, and 
the misery and oppression in the peasant’s hut, which are 
to me what Aristotle and the schoolmen are to him.” 

“And I,” said Christopher, “when he speaks, think of 
our printing-press, until my daily toil there seems the 
highest work I could do; and to be a printer, and wing 
such words as his through the world, the noblest thing on 
earth.” 

“ But his lectures fight the good fight even more than his 
disputations,” remarked Gottfried. In these debates he 
clears the world of the foe; but in his explanations of the 
Psalms and the Romans, he carries the battle within, and 
clears the heart of the lies which kept it back from God. 
In his attacks on Aristotle, he leads you to the Bible as the 
one source of truth; in his discourses on justification by 
faith, he leads you to God as the one source of holiness and 
joy.” 

“ They say poor Dr. Todocus is quite ill with vexation at 
his defeat,” said Christopher; “and that there are many 
bitter things said against Dr. Luther at Erfurt.” 

“What does that matter,” rejoined Ulrich, “since Wit¬ 
tenberg is becoming every month more thronged with 
students from all parts of Germany, and the Augustinian 
cloister is already full of young monks, sent hither from 
various convents, to study under Dr. Luther! The youth 
and vigor of the nation an with us. Let the dead bury 
their dead.” 

“Ah, children,” murmured the grandmother, looking up 
from her knitting, “ that is a funeral procession that lasts 
long. The young always speak of the old as if they had 
been born old. Do you think our hearts never throbbed 
high with hope, and that we never fought with dragons? 
Yet the old serpent is not killed yet. Nor will he be dead 
when we are dead, and you are old, and your grandchildren 
take their place in the old fight, and think they are fight¬ 
ing the first battle the world has seen, and vanquishing the 
last enemy.” 


182 


THE SGHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


“Perhaps not,” said Gottfried; “but the last enemy will 
be overcome at last, and who knows how soon?” 

Wittenberg, October, 1513. 

It is a strong bond of union between Herr Reichenbach 
and me, our reverence and love for Dr. Luther. 

He is lecturing now on the Romans and the Psalms, and 
as I sit at my spinning-wheel, or sew, Gottfried often reads 
to me notes from these lectures, or tells me what they have 
been about. This is a comfort to me also, because he has 
many thoughts and doubts which, were it not for his friend¬ 
ship with Dr. Luther, would make me tremble for him. 
They are so new and strange to me; and as it is, I never 
venture to speak of them to my mother. 

He thinks there is great need of reformations and 
changes in the church. He even thinks Christopher not 
far from right in his dislike of many of the priests and 
monks, who, he says, lead lives which are a disgrace to 
Christendom. 

But his chief detestation is the sale of indulgences, now 
preached in many of the towns of Saxony, by Dr. Tetzel. 
He says it is a shameless traffic in lies, and that most men 
of intelligence and standing in the great cities think so. 
And he tells me that a very good man, a professor of the¬ 
ology—Dr. John Wesel—preached openly against them 
about fifty years ago at the University of Erfurt, and after¬ 
ward at Worms and Mainz; and that John of Goch and 
other holy men were most earnest in denouncing them. 

And when I asked if the pope did not sanction them, he 
said that to understand what the pope is one needs to go to 
Rome. He went there in his youth, not on pilgrimage, 
but on mercantile business, and he told me that the wicked¬ 
ness he saw there, especially in the family of the reigning 
pope, the Borgia, for many years made him hate the very 
name of religion. Indeed, he said it was principally 
through Dr. Luther that he had begun again to feel there 
could be a religion, which, instead of being a cloak for sin, 
should be an incentive to holiness. 

He says also that I have been quite mistaken about 
“Reinecke Fuchs;” that it is no vulgar jest-book, mocking 
at really sacred things, but a bitter, earnest satire against 
the hypocrisy which practices all kinds of sins in the name 
of sacred things. 


THE SCHON BERG-COTTA FAMILY. 183 

He doubts even if the Oalixtines and Hussites are as bad 
as they have been represented to be. It alarms me some¬ 
times to hear him say these things. His world is so much 
larger than mine, it is difficult for my thoughts to follow 
him into it. If the world is so bad, and there is so much 
hypocrisy in the holiest places, perhaps I have been hard on 
poor Christopher after all. 

But if Fritz has found it so, how unhappy it must make 
him! 

Can really religious people like Fritz and Eva do nothing 
better for the world, but leave it and grow more and more 
corrupt and unbelieving, while they sit apart to weave their 
robes of sanctity in convents? It does seem time for some¬ 
thing to be done. I wonder who will do it? 

I thought it might be the pope; but Gottfried shakes his 
head, and says, “So good thing can begin at Borne.” 

“ Or the prelates?” I asked one day. 

“They are too intent,” he said, “on making their courts 
as magnificent as those of the princes, to be able to inter¬ 
fere with the abuses by which their revenues are main¬ 
tained.” 

“Or the princes?” 

“ The friendship of the prelates is too important to them, 
for them to interfere in spiritual matters.” 

“Or the emperor?” 

“The emperor,” he said, “has enough to do to hold his 
own against the princes, the prelates, and the pope.” 

“Or the knights?” 

“The knights are at war with all the world,” he replied; 
“to say nothing of their ceaseless private feuds with each 
other. With the peasants rising on one side in wild insur¬ 
rection, the great nobles contending against their privilges 
on the other, and the great burgher families throwing their 
barbarous splendor into the shade as much as the city pal¬ 
aces do their bare robber castles, the knights and petty 
nobles have little but bitter words to spare for the abuses of 
the clergy. Besides, most of them have relations whom 
they hope to provide for with some good abbey.” 

“ Then the peasants!” I suggested. “ Hid not the gospel 
first take root among peasants?” 

“Inspired peasants and fishermen,” he replied, thought¬ 
fully. “Peasants who had walked up and down the land 
three years in the presence of the Master. But who is to 
teach our peasants now? They cannot read!” 


184 THE SGHONBEllG-GOTTA FAMILY. 

“Then it must be the burghers,” I said. 

“Each may he prejudiced in favor of his order,” he re¬ 
plied, with a smile; “but I think if better days dawn, it 
will be through the cities. There the new learning takes 
root; there the rich have society and cultivation, and the 
poor have teachers; and men’s minds are brightened by 
contact and debate, and there is leisure to think and free¬ 
dom to speak. If a reformation of abuses were to begin, 
I think the burghers would promote it most of all.” 

“But who is to begin it?” I asked. “Has no one ever 
tried?” 

“Many have tried,” he replied, sadly; “and many have 
perished in trying. While they were assailing one abuse, 
others were increasing. Or while they endeavored to heal 
some open wound, some one arose and declared that it was 
impossible to separate the disease from the whole frame, 
and that they were attempting the life of our holy mother 
the church.” 

“Who, then, will venture to begin?” I said. “Can it 
be Dr. Luther? He is bold enough to venture anything; 
and since he has done so much good to Fritz, and to you, 
and to me, why not to the whole church?” 

“Dr. Luther is faithful enough, and bold enough for 
anything his conscience calls him to,” said Gottfried; “but 
he is occupied with saving men’s souls, not with reforming 
ecclesiastical abuses.” 

“But if the ecclesiastical abuses came to interfere with 
the salvation of men’s souls,” I suggested, “ what would 
Dr. Luther do then?” 

“We should see, Else,” said Gottfried. “If the wolves 
attacked one of Dr. Luther’s sheep, I do not think he 
would care with what weapon he rescued it, or at what 
risk.” 


185 


THE 80H0NBERG-C0TTA FAMILY. 

PART XII. 

EVA’S STORY. 

Nimptschek, 1517. 

Great changes have taken place during these last three 
years in Aunt Cotta’s home. Else has been married more 
than two years, and sends me wonderful narratives of the 
beauty and wisdom of her little Margarethe, who begins 
now to lisp the names of mother and father and aunts. 
Else has also taught the little creature to kiss her hand to 
a picture they have of me, and call it Cousin Eva. They 
will not adopt my convent name. 

Chriemhild also is betrothed to the young knight, 
Ulrich von Gersdorf, who has a castle in the Thuringian 
Forest; and she writes that they often speak of Sister Ave, 
and that he keeps the dried violets still, with a lock of his 
mother’s hair and a relic of his patron saint. Chriemhild 
says I should scarcely know him again, he is become so 
earnest and so wise, and so full of good purposes. 

And little Thekla writes that she also understands some¬ 
thing of Latin. Else’s husband has taught her; and there 
is nothing Else and Gottfried Reichenbach like so much as 
to hear her sing the hymns Cousin Eva used to sing. 

They seem to think of me as a kind of angel sister, who 
was early taken to God, and will never grow old. It is 
very sweet to be remembered thus; but sometimes it seems 
as if it were hardly me they were remembering or loving, 
but what I was or might have been. 

Would they recognize Cousin Eva in the grave, quiet 
woman of twenty-two I have become? For while in the 
old home Time' seems to mark his course like a stream by 
growth and life, here in the convent he seems to mark it 
only by the slow falling of the shadow on the silent dial— 
the shadow of death. In the convent there is no growth 
but growing old. 

In Aunt Cotta’s home the year expanded from winter 
into spring, and summer, and autumn—seed-time and har¬ 
vest—the season of flowers and the season of fruits. The 
seasons grew into each other, we knew not how or when. 
In the convent the year is sharply divided into December, 
January, February, March, and April, with nothing to dis¬ 
tinguish one month from another but their names and 
dates. 


186 


THE SCUONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


In our old home the day brightened from dawn to noon, 
and then mellowed into sunset, and softly faded into night. 
Here in the convent the day is separated into hours by the 
clock. 

Sister Beatrice’s poor faded face is slowly becoming a lit¬ 
tle more faded; Aunt Agnes’ a little more worn and sharp; 
a d I, like the rest, am six years older than I was six years 
ago, when I came here; and that is all. 

It is true, fresh novices have arrived, and have taken the 
irrevocable vows, and fair young faces are around me; but 
my heart aches sometimes when I look at them, and think 
that they, like the rest of us, have closed the door on life, 
with all its changes, and have entered on that monotonous 
pathway to the grave whose stages are simply growing old. 

Some of these novices come full of high aspirations for a 
religious life. They have been told about the heavenly 
Spouse, who will fill their consecrated hearts with pure, 
unutterable joys, the world can never know. 

Many come as sacrifices to family poverty or family pride, 
because their noble parents are too poor to maintain them 
suitably, or in order that their fortunes may swell the 
dower of some married sister. 

I know what disappointment is before them when they 
learn that the convent is but a poor, childish mimicry of 
the world, with its petty ambitions and rivalries, but with¬ 
out the life and the love. I know the noblest will suffer 
most, and may, perhaps, fall the lowest. 

To narrow, apathetic natures, the icy routine of habit 
will more easily replace the varied flow of life. They will 
fit into their harness sooner, and become as much interested 
in the gossip of the house or the order, the election of 
superiors, or the scandal of some neighboring nunnery, as 
they would have become in the gossip of the town or village 
they would have lived in, in the world. 

But warm hearts and high spirits—these will chafe and 
struggle, and dream they have reached depths of self-abase¬ 
ment or soared to heights of mystical devotion, and then 
awake, with bitter self-reproaches, to find themselves too 
weak to cope with some small temptation, like Aunt Agnes. 

These I will help all I can. But I have learned, since I 
came to Nimptschen, that it is a terrible and perilous 
thing to take the work of the training of our souls out of 
God’s hands into our own. The pruning-knife in his 


THE 8CH0NBEU0-C0TTA FAMILY. 


187 


hands must sometimes wound and seem to impoverish; but 
in ours it cuts, and wounds, and impoverishes, and does 
not prune. We can, indeed, inflict pain on ourselves; hut 
God alone can make pain healing, or suffering discipline. 

I can only pray that, however mistaken many may be 
in immuring themselves here, Thou who art the good phy¬ 
sician wilt take us, with all our useless, self-inflicted wounds, 
and all our wasted, self-stunted faculties, and as we are and 
as Thou art, still train us for Thyself. 

The infirmary is what interests me most. Having 
secluded ourselves from all the joys and sorrows and vicis¬ 
situdes of common life, we seem scarcely to have left any¬ 
thing in God’s hands, wherewith to try our faith and sub¬ 
due our wills to his, except sickness. Bereavements we 
cannot know who have bereaved ourselves of all companion¬ 
ship with our beloved for evermore on earth. Nor can we 
know the trials either of poverty or of prosperity, since we 
can never experience either; but, having taken the vow of 
voluntary poverty on ourselves, while we can never call 
anything individually our own, we are freed from all anx¬ 
ieties by becoming members of a richly endowed order. 

Sickness only remains beyond our control; and, there¬ 
fore, when I see any of the sisterhood laid on the bed of 
suffering, I think: 

“ God has laid thee there!” and I feel more sure that it is 
the right thing. 

I still instruct the novices; but sometimes the dreary 
question comes to me: 

“For what am I instructing them?” 

Life has no future for them—only a monotonous prolong¬ 
ing of the monotonous present. 

I try to feel, “I am training them for eternity.” But 
who can do that but God, who inhabiteth eternity, and sees 
the links which connect every moment of the little circles 
of time with the vast circumference of the everlasting 
future? 

But I do my best. Catharine von Bora, a young girl of 
sixteen, who has lately entered the covent, interests me 
deeply. There is such strength in her character and such 
warmth in her heart. But alas! what scope is therefor 
these here? 

Aunt Agnes has not opened her heart in any way to me. 
True, when I was ill, she watched over me as tenderly as 


188 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Aunt Cotta conld; but when I recovered, she seemed to 
repel all demonstrations of gratitude and affection, and 
went on with that round of penances and disciplines, which 
make the nuns reverence her as so especially saintly. 

Sometimes I look with longing to the smoke and light 
in the village we can see among the trees from the upper 
windows of the convent. I know that each little wreath of 
smoke comes from the hearth of a home where there are 
father and mother and little children; and the smoke 
wreaths seem to me to rise like holy clouds of incense to 
God our Father in heaven. 

But the alms given so liberally by the sisterhood are given 
at the convent-gate, so that we never form any closer con¬ 
nection with the poor around us than that of beggars and 
almoners; and I long to be their friend. 

Sometimes I am afraid I acted in impatient self-will in 
leaving Aunt Cotta’s home, and that I should have served 
God better by remaining there, and that, after all, my de¬ 
parture may have left some little blank it would not have 
been useless to fill. As the girls marry, Aunt Cotta might 
have found me a comfort; and, as “Cousin Eva,” I might 
perhaps have been more of a help to Else’s children than I 
can be to the nuns here as Sister Ave. But whatever 
might have been, it is impatience and rebellion to think of 
that now; and nothing can separate me from God and his 
love. 

Somehow or other, however, even the “ Theologia Ger- 
maniea,” and the high, disinterested communion with God 
it teaches, seemed sweeter to me, in the intervals of an in- 
terrupted and busy life, than as the business of this 
uninterrupted leisure. The hours of contemplation were 
more blessed for the very trials and occupations which 
seemed to hinder them. 

Sometimes I feel as if my heart also were freezing, and 
becoming set and hard. I am afraid, indeed, it would, 
were it not for poor Sister Beatrice, who has had a para¬ 
lytic stroke, and is now a constant inmate of the infirmary. 
She speaks at times very incoherently, and cannot think at 
any time connectedly. But I have found a book which 
interests her; it is the Latin Gospel of St. Luke, which I 
am allowed to take from the convent library and translate 
to her. The narratives are so brief and simple, she can 
comprehend them, and she never wearies of hearing them. 


THE SCHONBEKQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


189 

The very familiarity endears them, and to me they are 
always new. 

But it is very strange that there is nothing about pen¬ 
ance or vows in it, or the adoration of the blessed virgin. 
I suppose I shall find that in the other gospels, or in the 
Epistles, which were written after our lady’s assumption 
into heaven. 

Sister Beatrice likes much to hear me sing the hymn by 
Bernard of Clugni, on the perpetuity of joy in heaven: * 

Here brief is the sighing, 

And brief is the crying, 

For brief is the life! 

The life there is endless, 

The joy there is endless, 

And ended the strife. 

What joys are in heaven? 

To whom are they given? 

Ah! what? and to whom? 

The stars to the earth-born, 

** Best robes ” to the sin-worn, 

The crown for the doom! 

Oh country the fairest! 

Our country the dearest. 

We press toward thee! 

Oh Sion the golden! 

Our eyes now are holden, 

The light till we see: 

Thy crystalline ocean, 

Unvexed by commotion, 

Thy fountain of life; 

Thy deep peace unspoken, 

Pure, sinless, unbroken— 

Thy peace beyond strife: 

Thy meek saints all glorious, 

Thy martyrs victorious, 

Who suffer no more; 

Thy halls full of singing, 

Thy hymns ever ringing 
Along thy safe shore, 


* Hie breve vivitur, hie breve plangitur, hie breve fletur, 
Non breve vivere, non breve plangere, retribuetur. 

O retributio! stat brevis actio, vita perennis, 

O retributio! ccelica mansio stat lue plenis, 
etc., etc., etc. 



190 


THE SCBONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Like the lily for whiteness, 
Like the jewel for brightness. 
Thy vestments, oh Bride! 
The Lamb ever with thee. 

The Bridegroom is with thee— 
With thee to abide! 

We know not, we know not, 
All human words show not, 
The joys we may reach; 

The mansions preparing, 

The joys for our sharing, 

The welcome for each. 

Oh Sion the golden! 

My eyes still are holden, 

Thy light till I see; 

And deep in thy glory, 
Unveiled then before me, 

My King, look on thee! 


April, 1517. 

The whole of the Augustinian order of Saxony has been 
greatly moved by the visitation of Dr. Martin Luther. He 
has been appointed deputy vicar-general in the place of Dr. 
Staupitz, who has gone on a mission to the Netherlands, to 
collect relics for the Elector Frederic’s new church at 
Wittenberg. 

Last April Dr. Luther visited the monastery of Grimma, 
not far from us; and through our prioress, who is con¬ 
nected with the prior of Grimma, we hear much about it. 

He strongly recommends the study of the Scriptures and 
of St. Augustine, in preference to every other book, by the 
brethren and sisters of his order. We have begun to follow 
his advice in our convent, and a new impulse seems given 
to everything. I have also seen two beautiful letters of Dr. 
Martin Luther’s, written to two brethren of the Augus¬ 
tinian Order. Both were written in April last, and they 
have been read by many among us. The first was to 
Brother George Spenlein, a monk at Memmingen. It be¬ 
gins, “In the name of Jesus Christ.” After speaking of 
some private pecuniary matters, he writes: 

“ As to the rest, I desire to know how it goes with thy 
soul; whether, weary of its own righteousness, it learns to 
breathe and to trust in the righteousness of Christ. For 
in our age the temptation to presumption burns in many, 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


101 


and chiefly in those who are trying with all their might to 
be just and good. Ignorant of the righteousness of God, 
which in Christ is given to us richly and without price, 
they seek in themselves to.do good works, so that at last 
they may have confidence to stand before God, adorned 
with merits and virtues—which is impossible. Thou, when 
with us, wert of this opinion, and so was I; but now I 
contend against this error, although I have not yet con¬ 
quered it. 

“ Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him cru¬ 
cified; learn to sing to him, and, despairing of thyself, to 
say to him, ‘Lord Jesus, thou art my righteousness, hut I 
am thy sin. Thou hast taken me upon thyself, and given 
to me what is thine; thou hast taken on thee what thou 
wast not, and hast given to me what I was not.’ Take care 
not to aspire to such a purity that thou shalt no longer 
seem to thyself a sinner; for Christ does not dwell except 
in sinners. For this he descended from heaven, where he 
abode with the just, that he might abide with sinners. 
Meditate on this love of his, and thou shalt drink in his 
sweet consolations. For if, by our labors and afflictions, 
we could attain quiet of conscience, why did he die? 
Therefore, only in him, by a believing self-despair both of 
thyself and of thy works, wilt thou find peace. For he has 
made thy sins his, and his righteousness he has made 
thine.” 

Aunt Agnes seemed to drink in these words like a patient 
in a raging fever. She made me read them over to her 
again and again, and then translate and copy them; and 
now she carries them about with her everywhere. 

To me the words that follow are as precious. Dr. 
Luther says, that as Christ hath borne patiently with us 
wanderers, we should also bear with others. “Prostrate 
thyself before the Lord Jesus,” he writes, “seek all that 
thou lackest. He himself will teach thee all, even to do 
for others as he has done for thee.” 

The second letter was to Brother George Leiffer of Er¬ 
furt. It speaks of affliction thus: 

“The cross of Christ is divided throughout the whole 
world. To each his portion comes in time, and does not 
fail. Thou, therefore, do not seek to cast thy portion from 
thee, but rather receive it as a holy relic, to be enshrined, 
not in a gold or silver reliquary, but in the sanctuary of a 


192 


THE SCHOMB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


golden, that is, a loving and submissive heart. For if the 
wood of the cross was so consecrated by contact with the 
flesh and blood of Christ that it is considered as the noblest 
of relics, how much more are injuries, persecutions, suffer¬ 
ings, and the hatred of men, sacred relics, consecrated not 
by the touch of his body, but by contact with his most lov¬ 
ing heart and Godlike will! These we should embrace, 
and bless, and cherish, since through him the curse is 
transmuted into blessing, suffering into glory, the cross 
into joy.” 

Sister Beatrice delights in these words, and murmurs 
them over to herself as I have explained them to her. 
“Yes, I understand; this sickness, helplessness, all I have 
lost and suffered, are sacred relics from my Saviour; not 
because he forgets, but because he remembers me—he re¬ 
members me. Sister Ave, I am content.” 

And then she likes me to sing her favorite hymn, Jesu 
dulcis memoria: 


Oh Jesus! thy sweet memory 
Can fill the heart with ecstasy; 

But passing all things sweet that be. 

Thy presence, Lord, to me. 

What hope, oh Jesus, thou canst render 
To those who other hopes surrender! 

To those who seek thee, oh how tender I 
But what to those who find! 

With Mary, ere the morning break, 

Him at the sepulcher I seek— 

Would hear him to my spirit speak, 

And see him with my heart. 

Wherever I may chance to be, 

Thee first my heart desires to see; 

How glad when I discover thee; 

How blest when I retain! 

Beyond all treasures is thy grace; 

Oh, when wilt thou thy steps retrace. 
And satisfy me with thy face, 

And make me wholly glad? 

Then come, oh, come, thou perfect King, 
Of boundless glory, boundless spring; 
Arise, and fullest daylight bring, 

Jesus, expected longl 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


193 


May, 1517. 

Aunt Agnes has spoken to me at last. Abruptly and 
sternly, as if more angry with herself than repenting or 
rejoicing, she said tome this morning, “Child, those words 
of Dr. Luther’s have searched my heart. I have been try¬ 
ing all my life to be a saint, and so to reach God. And I 
have failed utterly. And now I learn that I am a sinner, 
and yet that God’s love reaches me. The cross, the cross 
of Christ, is my pathway from hell to heaven. I am not 
a saint. I shall never be a saint. Christ is the only Saint, 
the Holy One of God; and he has borne my sins, and he is 
my righteousness. He has done it all; and I have nothing 
left but to give him all the glory, and to love, to love, to 
love him to all eternity. And I will do it,” she added fer¬ 
vently, “poor, proud, destitute, and sinful creature that I 
am. I cannot help it; I must.” 

But strong and stern as the words were, how changed 
Aunt Agnes’ manner ! humble and simple as a child’s. 
And as she left me for some duty in the house, she kissed 
my forehead, and said, “Ah, child, love me a little, if you 
can, not as a saint, but as a poor, sinful old woman, who 
among her worst sins has counted loving thee too much, 
which was perhaps, after all, among the least; love me a 
little, Eva, for my sister’s sake, whom you love so much.” 

else’s story. 


August, 1517. 

Yes, our little Gretchen is certainly a remarkable, child. 
Although she is not yet two years old, she knows all of us 
by name. She tyrannizes over us all, except me. I deny 
her many things which she cries for; except when Gott¬ 
fried is present, who, unfortunately, cannot bear to see her 
unhappy for a moment, and having (he says) had his tem¬ 
per spoiled in infancy by a cross nurse, has no notion of 
infant education, except to avoid contradiction. Christo¬ 
pher, who always professed a supreme contempt for babies, 
gives her rides on his shoulder in the most submissive 
manner. But best of all, I love to see her sitting on my 
blind father’s knee, and stroking his face with a kind of 
tender, pitiful reverence, as if she felt there was something 
missing there. 


194 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


I have taught her, too, to say Fritz’s name, when I show 
her the little lock I wear of his hair; and to kiss Eva’s 
picture. 

I cannot bear that they shonld be as lost or dead to her. 
But I am afraid she is perplexed between Eva’s portrait and 
the picture of the holy virgin, which I teach her to bow 
and cross her forehead before; because sometimes she tries 
to kiss the picture of our lady, and to twist her little fin¬ 
gers into the sacred sign before Eva’s likeness. However, 
by and by she will distinguish better. And are not Eva 
and Fritz indeed our family saints and patrons? I do be¬ 
lieve their prayers bring down blessings on us all. 

For our family has been so much blessed lately! The 
dear mother’s face looks so bright, and has regained some¬ 
thing of its old sweet likeness to the mother of mercy. 
And I am so happy, so brimful of happiness. And it cer¬ 
tainly does make me feel more religious than I did. 

Not the home-happiness only, I mean, but that best 
blessing of all, that came first, before I knew that Gott¬ 
fried cared for me—the knowledge of the love of God to 
me, that best riches of all, without which all our riches 
would be mere cares—the riches of the treasury of God 
freely opened to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Gottfried is better than I ever thought he was. Perhaps 
he really grows better every year; certainly he seems better 
and dearer to me. 

Chriemhild and Ulrich are to be married very soon. He 
is gone now to see Franz von Sickingen, and his other re¬ 
lations in the Rhineland, and to make arrangements con¬ 
nected with his marriage. Last year Chriemhild and 
Atlantis stayed some weeks at the old castle in the Thurin- 
gian Forest, near Eisenach. A wild life it seemed to be, 
'from their description, deep in the heart of the forest, in 
a lonely fortress on a rock, with only a few peasants’ huts 
in sight; and with all kinds of strange legends of demon 
huntsmen, and elves, and sprites haunting the neighbor¬ 
hood. To me it seems almost as desolate as the wilderness 
where John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey; 
but Chriemhild thought it delightful. She made acquaint¬ 
ance with some of the poor peasants, and they seemed to 
think her an angel—an opinion (Atlantis says) shared by 
Ulrich’s old uncle and aunt, to say nothing of Ulrich him¬ 
self. At first the aged Aunt Hermentrud was rather dis- 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


195 


tant; but on the Schonberg pedigree having been duly 
tested and approved, the old lady at length considered her¬ 
self free to give vent to her feelings, while the old knight 
courteously protested that he had always seen Chriemhild’s 
pedigree in her face. 

And Ulrich says there is one great advantage in the soli¬ 
tude and strength of his castle—he could offer an asylum at 
.any time to Dr. Luther, who has of late become an object 
'of bitter hatred to some of the priests. 

Dr. Luther is most kind to our little Gretchen, whom 
he baptized. He says little children often understand God 
better than the wisest doctors of divinity. 

Thekla has experienced her first sorrow. Her poor little 
foundling, Nix, is dead. For some days the poor creature 
had been ailing, and at last he lay for some hours quiver¬ 
ing, as if with inward convulsions; yet at Thekla’s voice 
the dull, glassy eyes would brighten, and he would wag his 
tail feebly as he lay on his side. At last he died; and 
Thekla was not to be comforted, but sat apart and shed 
bitter tears. The only thing which cheered her was Chris¬ 
topher’s making a grave in the garden for Nix, under the 
pear tree where I used to sit at embroidery in summer, a§ 
now she does. It was of no use to try to laugh her out of 
her distress. Her lip quivered and her eyes filled with 
tears if any one attempted it. Atlantis spoke seriously to 
her on the duty of a little girl of twelve beginning to put 
away childish things; and even the gentle mother tenderly 
remonstrated, and said one day, when Dr. Luther had 
asked her for her favorite, and had been answered by a 
burst of tears, “My child, if you mourn so for a dog, what 
will you do when real sorrows come?” 

But Dr. Luther seemed to understand Thekla better 
than any of us, and to take her part. He said she was a 
child, and her childish sorrows were no more trifles to her 
than our sorrows are to us; that from heaven we might 
probably look on the fall of an empire as of less moment 
than we now thought the death of Thekla’s dog; yet that 
the angels who look down on us from heaven do not de¬ 
spise our little joys and sorrows, nor should we those of the 
little ones; or words to this effect. He has a strange sym¬ 
pathy with the hearts of children. Thekla was so encour¬ 
aged by his compassion that she crept close to him and laid 
her hand in his, and said, with a look of wistful earnest- 


196 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


ness, “Will Nix rise again at the last day? Will there be 
dogs in the other world?” 

Many of us were appalled at such an irreverent idea; but 
Dr. Luther did not seem to think it irreverent. He said, 
“We know less of what that other world will be than this 
little one, or than that babe,” he added, pointing to my 
little Gretchen, “knows of the empires or powers of this 
world. But of this we are sure, the world to come will be 
no empty, lifeless waste. See how full and beautiful the 
Lord God has made all things in this passing, perishing 
world of heaven and earth! How much more beautiful, 
then, will he make that eternal, incorruptible world! God 
will make new heavens and a new earth. All poisonous, 
and malicious, and hurtful creatures will be banished 
thence—all that our sin has ruined. All creatures will not 
only be harmless, but lovely, and pleasant, and joyful, so 
that we might play with them. ‘The sucking child shall 
ply on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put 
his hand on the cockatrice’s den.’ Why, then, should 
there not be little dogs in the new earth, whose skin might 
be fair as gold, and their hair as bright as precious stones?” 

Certainly, in Thekla’s eyes, from that moment there has 
been no doctor of divinity like Dr. Luther. 

Torgau, November 10, 1516. 

The plague is at Wittenberg. We have all taken refuge 
here. The university is scattered, and many, also, of the 
Augustinian monks. 

Dr. Luther remains in the convent at Wittenberg. We 
have seen a copy of a letter of his, dated the 26th October, 
and addressed to the Venerable Father John Lange, Prior 
of Erfurt Monastery. 

“Health. I have need of two secretaries or chancellors, 
since all day long I do nothing but write letters; and I 
know not whether, always writing, I may not sometimes 
repeat the same things. Thou wilt see. 

“I am convent lecturer; reader at meals; I am desired 
to be daily parish preacher; I am director of studies, vicar 
(i.e., prior eleven times over), inspector of the fish-ponds 
at Litzkau, advocate of the cause of the people of Herzberg 
at Torgau, lecturer on Paul and on the Psalms; besides what 
I have said already of my constant correspondence. I have 
rarely time to recite my canonical hours, to say nothing of 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


197 

my own particular temptations from the world, the flesh, 
and the devil. See what a man of leisure I am! 

“Concerning Brother John Metzel I believe you have 
already received my opinion. I will see, however, what I 
can do. How can you think I can find room for your 
Sardanapaluses and Sybarites? If you have educated them 
ill, you must bear with those you have educated ill. I have 
enough useless brethren; if, indeed, any are useless to a 
patient heart. I am persuaded that the useless may become 
more useful than those who are the most useful now. 
Therefore bear with them for the time. 

“I think I have already written to you about the brethren 
you sent me. Some I have sent to Magister Spangenburg, 
as they requested, to save their breathing this pestilential 
air. With two from Cologne I felt such sympathy, and 
thought so much of their abilities, that I have retained 
them, although at much expense. Twenty-two priests, 
forty-two youths, and in the university altogether forty-two 
persons are supported out of our poverty. But the Lord 
will provide. 

“ You say that yesterday you began to lecture on the sen¬ 
tences. To-morrow I begin the Epistle to the Galatians; 
although I fear that, with the plague among us as it is, I 
shall not be able to continue. The plague has taken away 
already two or three among us, but not all in one day; and 
the son of our neighbor Faber, yesterday in health, to-day 
is dead; and another is infected. What shall I say? It is 
indeed here, and begins to rage with great cruelty and sud¬ 
denness, especially among the young. You would persuade 
me and Master Bartholomew to take refuge with you. Why 
should I flee? I hope the world would not collapse if 
Brother Martin fell. If the pestilence spreads, I will in¬ 
deed disperse the monks throughout the land. As for me, 
I have been placed here. My obedience as a monk does not 
suffer me to fly; since what obedience required once, it de¬ 
mands still. Not that I do not fear death (I am not the 
Apostle Paul, but only the reader of the Apostle Paul), 
but I hope the Lord will deliver me from my fear. 

“ Farewell; and be mindful of us in this day of the visi¬ 
tation of the Lord, to whom be glory.” 

This letter has strengthened me and many. Yes, if it 
had been our duty, I trust, like Dr. Luther, we should 
have had courage to remain. The courage of his act 


198 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


strengthens ns; and also the confession of fear in his 
words. It does not seem a fear which hath torment or 
which fetters his spirit. It does not even crush his cheer¬ 
fulness. It is a natural fear of dying, which I also cannot 
overcome. From me, then, as surely from him, when God 
sees it time to die, He will doubtless remove the dread of 
death. 

This season of the pestilence recalls so much to me of 
what happened when the plague last visited us at Eisenach! 

We have lost some since then, if I ought to call Eva and 
Fritz lost. But how my life has been enriched! My hus¬ 
band, our little Gretchen; and then so much outward 
prosperity! All that pressure of poverty and daily care en¬ 
tirely gone, and so much wherewith to help others! And 
yet, am I so entirely free from care as I thought to be? 
Am I not even at times more burdened with it? 

When first I married, and had Gottfried on whom to 
unburden every perplexity, and riches which seemed to me in¬ 
exhaustible, instead of poverty, I thought I should never 
know care again. 

But is it so? Have not the very things themselves, in 
their possession, become cares? When I hear of these 
dreadful wars with the Turks, and of the insurrections and 
disquiets in various parts, and look round on our pleasant 
home, and gardens, and fields, I think how terrible it would 
be again to be plunged into poverty, or that Gretchen 
ever should be; so that riches themselves become cares. It 
makes me think of what a good man once told me: that 
the word in the Bible which is translated “ rich” in speak¬ 
ing of Abraham, in other places is translated “heavy;” so 
that instead of reading, “ Abraham left Egypt rich in cat¬ 
tle and silver and gold,” we might read “ heavy in cattle, 
silver, and gold.” 

Yes, we are on a pilgrimage to the Holy City; we are in 
flight from an evil world; and too often riches are weights 
which hinder our progress. 

I find it good, therefore, to be here in the small, humble 
house we have taken refuge in—Gottfried, Gretchen, and 
I. The servants are dispersed elsewhere; and it lightens 
my heart to feel how well we can do without luxuries which 
were beginning to seem like necessaries. Dr. Luther’s 
words come to my mind: “ The covetous enjoy what they 
have as little as what they have not. They cannot even 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


199 


rejoice in the sunshine. They think not what a noble gift 
the light is—what an inexpressibly great treasure the sun 
is, which shines freely on all the world.” 

Yes, God’s common gifts are his most precious; and his 
most precious gifts—even life itself—have no root in them¬ 
selves. Not that they are without root; they are better 
rooted in the depths of his unchangeable love. 

It is well to be taught, by such a visitation, even as this 
pestilence, the utter insecurity of everything here. “If 
the ship itself,” as Gottfried says, “is exposed to shipwreck, 
who, then, can secure the cargo?” Henceforth let me be 
content with the only security Dr. Luther says God will 
give us—the security of his presence and care: “ I will 

never leave thee” 


Wittenberg, June, 1517. 

We are at home once more; and, thank God, our two 
households are undiminished, save by one death—that of 
our youngest sister, the baby when we left Eisenach. The 
professor and students also have returned. Dr. Luther, 
who remained here all the time, is preaching with more 
force and clearness. 

The town is greatly divided in opinion about him. Dr. 
Tetzel, the great papal commissioner for the sale of indul¬ 
gences, has established his red cross, announcing the sale 
of pardons, for some months, at Jiiterbok and Zerbst, not 
far from Wittenberg. 

Numbers of the townspeople, alarmed, I suppose, by the 
pestilence, into anxiety about their souls, have repaired to 
Dr. Tetzel, and returned with the purchased tickets of 
indulgence. 

I have always been perplexed as to what the indulgences 
really give. Christopher has terrible stories about the 
money paid for them being spent by Dr. Tetzel and others 
on taverns and feasts, and Gottfried says, “It is a bargain 
between the priests, who love money, and the people, who 
love sin.” 

Yesterday morning I saw one of the letters of indulgence 
for the first time. A neighbor of ours, the wife of a miller, 
whose weights have been a little suspected in the town, was 
in a state of great indignation when I went to purchase 
some flour of her. 

“See!” she said; “this Dr. Luther will be wiser than the 


200 


THE SCHONBE11Q-COTTA FAMILY. 


pope himself. He has refused to admit«my husband to the 
holy sacrament unless he repents and confesses to him, 
although he took his certificate in his hand.” 

She gave it to me, and I read it. Certainly, if the doc¬ 
tors of divinity disagree about the value of these indul¬ 
gences, Dr. Tetzel has no ambiguity nor uncertainty in his 
language. 

“I,” says the letter, “absolve thee from all the excesses, 
sins, and crimes which thou hast committed, however great 
and enormous they may be. I remit for thee the pains, 
thou mightest have had to endure in purgatory. I restore 
thee to participation in the sacraments. I incorporate thee 
afresh into the communion of the church. I re-establish 
thee in the innocence and purity in which thou wast at the 
time of thy baptism. So that, at the moment of thy death, 
the gate by which souls pass into the place of torments 
will be shut upon thee; while, on the contrary, that which 
leads to the paradise of joy will be open unto thee. And 
if thou art not called on to die soon, this grace will remain 
unaltered for the time of thy latter end. 

“ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. 

“Friar John Tetzel, Commissary, has signed it with 
his own hand.” 

“To think,” said my neighbor, “of the pope promising 
my Franz admittance into paradise; and Dr. Luther will 
not even admit him to the altar of the parish church? 
And after spending such a sum on it! for the friar must 
surely have thought my husband better off than he is, or 
he would not have demanded gold of poor struggling peo¬ 
ple like us.” 

“But if the angels at the gate of paradise should be of 
the same mind as Dr. Luther?” I suggested, “ Would it not 
be better to find that out here than there?” 

“It is impossible,” she replied; “have we not the holy 
father’s own word? and did we not pay a whole golden 
florin? It is impossible it can be in vain.” 

“Put the next florin in your scales instead of in Dr. 
Tetzel’s chest, neighbor,” said a student, laughing, as he 
heard her loud and angry words; “it may weigh heavier 
with your flour than against your sins.” 

I left them to finish the discussion. 

Gottfried says it is quite true that Dr. Luther in the 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 201 

confessional in the city churches has earnestly protested to 
many of his penitents against their trusting to these certifi¬ 
cates, and has positively refused to suffer any to communi¬ 
cate, except on their confessing their sins, and promising to 
forsake them, whether provided with indulgences or not. 

In his sermon to the people last year on the ten com¬ 
mandments, he told them forgiveness was freely given to 
the penitent by God, and was not to be purchased at any 
price, least of all with money. 


Wittenberg, July 18. 

The whole town is in a ferment to-day, on account of 
Dr. Luther’s sermon yesterday, preached before the elector 
in the castle church. 

The congregation was very large, composed of the court, 
students and townspeople. 

Not a child or ignorant peasant there but could under¬ 
stand the preacher’s words. The elector had procured 
especial indulgences from the pope in aid of his church, 
but Dr. Luther made no exception to conciliate him. He 
said the holy Scriptures nowhere demand of us any penalty 
or satisfaction for our sins. God gives and forgives freely 
and without price, out of his unutterable grace; and lays 
on the forgiven no other duty than true repentance and 
sincere conversion of the heart, resolution to bear the cross 
of Christ, and do all the good we can. He declared also 
that it would be better to give money freely toward the 
building of St. Peter’s church at Rome, than to bargain 
with alms for indulgences; that it was more pleasing to 
God to give to the poor, than to buy these letters, which, 
he said, would at the utmost do nothing more for any man 
than remit mere ecclesiastical penances. 

As we returned from the church together, Gottfried said: 

“ The battle-cry is sounded then at last. The wolf has 
assailed Dr. Luther’s own flock, and the shepherd is roused. 
The battle-cry is sounded, Else, but the battle is scarcely 
begun.” 

And when we described the sermon to our grandmother, 
she murmured: 

“It sounds to me, children, like an old story of my child¬ 
hood. Have I not heard such words half a century since 
in Bohemia? and have I not seen the lips which spoke them 
silenced in flames and blood? Neither Dr. Luther nor any 


202 


THE SCHONBEUQ-GOTTA FAMILY. 


of you know whither you are going. Thank God, I am 
soon going to him who died for speaking just such words! 
Thank God I hear them again before I die! I have 
doubted long about them and about everything; how could 
I dare to think a few proscribed men right against the 
whole church? But since these old words cannot be 
hushed, but rise from the dead again, I think there must 
be life in them; eternal life. Children,” she concluded, 
“tell me when Dr. Luther preaches again; I will hear him 
before I die, that I may tell your grandfather, when I meet 
him, the old truth is not dead. I think it would give him 
another joy, even before the throne of God.” 

Wittenberg, August. 

Christopher has returned from Jiiterbok. He saw 
there a great pile of burning faggots, which Dr. Tetzel has 
caused to be kindled in the market-place, “to burn the 
heretics,” he said. 

We laughed as he related this, and also at the furious 
threats and curses which had been launched at Dr. Luther 
from the pulpit in front of the iron money-cliest. But our 
grandmother said, “It is no jest, children, they have done 
it, and they will do it again yet!” 


PART XIII. 
else’s story. 

Wittenberg, Nov. 1 , 1517, 
All Saints’ Day. 

Yesterday evening, as I sat at the window with Gott¬ 
fried in the late twilight, hushing Gretchen to sleep, we 
noticed Dr. Luther walk rapidly along the street toward 
the castle church. His step was firm and quick, and he 
seemed too full of thought to observe anything as he passed. 
There was something unusual in his bearing, which made 
my husband call my attention to him. His head was erect 
and slightly thrown back, as when he preaches. He had a 
large packet of papers in his hand, and although he was 
evidently absorbed with some purpose, he had more the air 



THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 203 

of a general moving to a battlefield than of a theologian 
buried in meditation. 

This morning, as we went to the early mass of the festi¬ 
val, we saw a great crowd gathered round the doors of the 
castle church; not a mob, however, but an eager throng of 
well-dressed men, professors, citizens, and students; those 
within the circle reading some writing which was posted 
on the door, while around, the crowd was broken into little 
knots, in eager but not loud debate. 

Gottfried asked what had happened. 

“ It is only some Latin theses against the indulgences, by 
Dr. Luther,” replied one of the students, “inviting a dis¬ 
putation on the subject.” 

I was relieved to hear that nothing was the matter, and 
Gottfried and I quietly proceeded to the service. 

“It is only an affair of the university,” I said. “I was 
afraid it was some national disaster, an invasion of the 
Turks, or some event in the elector’s family.” 

As we returned, however, the crowd had increased, and 
the debate seemed to be becoming warm among some of 
them. One of the students was translating the Latin into 
German for the benefit of the unlearned, and we paused to 
listen. 

What he read seemed to me very true, but not at all re¬ 
markable. We had often heard Dr. Luther say and even 
preach similar things. At the moment we came up the 
words the student was reading were: 

“ It is a great error for one to think to make satisfaction 
for his sins, in that God always forgives gratuitously and 
from his boundless grace, requiring nothing in return but 
holy living.” 

This sentence I remember distinctly, because it was so 
much like what we had heard him preach. Other propo¬ 
sitions followed, such as that it was very doubtful if the 
indulgences could deliver souls from purgatory, and that it 
was better to give alms than to buy indulgences. But why 
these statements should collect such a crowd, and excite 
such intense interest, I could not quite understand, unless 
it was because they were in Latin. 

One sentence, I observed, aroused very mingled feelings 
in the crowd. It was the declaration that the holy Scrip¬ 
tures alone could settle any controversy, and that all the 
scholastic teachers together could not give authority to one 
doctrine. 


204 


TEE SCEONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


The students and many of the citizens received this an¬ 
nouncement with enthusiastic applause, and some of the 
professors testified a quiet approval of it; but others of the 
doctors shook their heads, and a few retired at once, mur¬ 
muring angrily as they went. 

At the close came a declaration by Dr. Luther, that 
whatever some unenlightened and morbid people might 
say, he was no heretic. 

“ Why should Dr. Luther think it necessary to conclude 
with a declaration that he is no heretic?” I said to Gott¬ 
fried as we walked home. “ Can anything he more full of 
respect for the pope and the church than many of these 
theses are? And why should they excite so much atten¬ 
tion? Dr. Luther says no more than so many of us think!” 

“True, Else,” replied Gottfried, gravely; “but to know 
how to say what other people only think, is what makes 
men poets and sages; and to dare to say what others only 
dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers, or both.” 

November 20. 

It is wonderful the stir these theses make. Christopher 
cannot get them printed fast enough. Both the Latin and 
German printing-presses are engaged, for they have been 
translated, and demands come for them from every part of 
Germany. 

Dr. Tetzel, they say, is furious, and many of the prelates 
are uneasy as to the result; the new bishop has dissuaded 
Dr. Luther from publishing an explanation of them. It 
is reported that the Elector Frederic is not quite pleased, 
fearing the effect on the new university, still in its infancy. 

Students, however, are crowding to the town, and to Dr. 
Luther’s lectures, more than ever. He is the hero of the 
youth of Germany. 

But none are more enthusiastic about him than our 
grandmother. She insisted on being taken to church on 
All Saints’ Day, and tottering up the aisle took her place 
immediately under Dr. Luther’s pulpit, facing the congre¬ 
gation. 

She had eyes or ears for none but him. When he came 
down the pulpit stairs she grasped his hand, and faltered 
out a broken blessing. And after she came home she sat a 
long time in silence, occasionally brushing away tears. 

When Gottfried and I took leave for the night, she held 
one of our hands in each of hers, and said; 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


205 


“Children! be braver than I have been; that man 
preaches the truth for which my husband died. God sends 
him to you. Be faithful to him. Take heed that you for¬ 
sake him not. It is not given to every one as to me to have 
the light they forsook in youth restored to them in old age. 
To me his words are like voices from the dead. They are 
worth dying for.” 

My mother is not so satisfied. She likes what Dr. 
Luther says, but she is afraid what Aunt Agnes might 
think of it. She thinks he speaks too violently sometimes. 
She does not like any one to be pained. She cannot her¬ 
self much like the way they sell the indulgences, but she 
hopes Dr. Tetzel means well, and she has no doubt that 
the pope knows best; and she is convinced that in their 
hearts all good people mean the same, only she is afraid, in 
the heat of discussion, every one will go further than any 
one intends, and so there will be a great deal of bad feeling. 
She thought it was quite right of Dr. Luther quietly to 
admonish any of his penitents who were imagining they 
could be saved without repentance; but why he should ex¬ 
cite all the town in this way by these theses she could not 
understand; especially on All Saints’ Day, when so many 
strangers came from the country, and the holy relics were 
exhibited, and every one ought to be absorbed with their 
devotions. 

“Ah, little mother,” said my father, “women are too 
tender-hearted for plowmen’s work. You could never 
bear to break up the clods, and tear up all the pretty wild 
flowers. But when the harvest comes we will set you to 
bind up the sheaves, or to glean beside the reapers. No 
rough hands of men will do that so well as yours.” 

And Gottfried said his vow as doctor of divinity makes 
it as much Dr. Luther’s plain duty to teach true divinity, 
as his priestly vows oblige him to guard his flock from error 
and sin. Gottfried says we have fallen on stormy times. 
For him that may be best, and by his side all is well for me. 
Besides, I am accustomed to rough paths. But when I look 
on our little tender Gretchen, as her dimpled cheek rests 
flushed with sleep on her pillow, I cannot help wishing the 
battle might not begin in her time. 

Dr. Luther counted the cost before he affixed these 
theses to the church door. It was this which made him 
do it so secretly, without consulting any of his friends. He 


206 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


knew there was risk in it, and he nobly resolved not to 
involve any one else—elector, professor, or pastor—in the 
danger he incurred without hesitation for himself. 

October, 1517. 

In’ one thing we are all agreed, and that is in our delight 
in Dr. Luther’s lectures on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Gala¬ 
tians Gottfried heard them and took notes, and reported 
them to us in my father’s house. We gather around him, 
all of us, in the winter evenings, while he reads those in¬ 
spiring words to us. Never, I think, were words like 
them. Yesterday he was reading to us, for the twentieth 
time, what Dr. Luther said on the words, “ Who loved me, 
and gave himself for me.” 

“Read with vehemency,” he says, “those words ‘me,’ and 
‘for me.’ Print this ‘me’ in thy heart, not doubting that 
thou art of the number to whom this ‘me’ belongeth; also, 
that Christ hath not only loved Peter and Paul, and given 
himself for them, but that the same grace also which is 
comprehended in this ‘me,’ as well pertainetli and cometh 
unto us as unto them. For as we cannot deny that we are 
all sinners, all lost; so we cannot deny that Christ died for 
our sins. Therefore when I feel and confess myself to be 
a sinner, why should I not say that I am made righteous 
through the righteousness of Christ, especially when I hear 
he loved me and gave himself for me?” 

And then my mother asked for the passages she most 
delights in: “Oh Christ, I am thy sin, thy curse, thy 
wrath of God, thy hell; and contrariwise, thou art my 
righteousness, my blessing, my life, my grace of God, my 
heaven.” 

And again, when he speaks of Christ being “made a 
curse for us, the unspotted and undefiled Lamb of God 
wrapped in our sins, God not laying our sins upon us, but 
upon his Son, that he, bearing the punishment thereof, 
might be our peace, that by his stripes we might be healed.” 

And again: 

“ Sin is a mighty conqueror, which devoureth all man¬ 
kind, learned and unlearned, holy, wise, and mighty men. 
This tyrant flieth upon Christ, and will needs swallow him 
up as he doth all other. But he seeth not that Christ is a 
person of invincible and everlasting righteousness. There¬ 
fore in this combat sin must needs be vanquished and 


THE SCHONBERO-CO TTA FAMILY. 


207 


killed; and righteousness must overcome, live, and reign. 
So in Christ all sin is vanquished, killed, and buried; and 
righteousness remaineth a conqueror, and reigneth forever. 

“In like manner Death, which is an omnipotent queen 
and empress of the whole world, killing kings, princes, and 
all men, doth mightily encounter with Life, thinking 
utterly to overcome it and to swallow it up. But because 
the Life was immortal, therefore when it was overcome, it 
nevertheless overcame, vanquishing and killing Death. 
Death, therefore, through Christ, is vanquished and abol¬ 
ished, so that now it is but a painted death, which, robbed 
of its sting, can no more hurt those that believe in Christ, 
who is become the death of Death. 

“ So the curse hath the like conflict with the blessing, 
and would condemn and bring it to naught; but it cannot. 
For the blessing is divine and everlasting, therefore the 
curse must needs give place. For if the blessing in Christ 
could be overcome, then would God himself be overcome. 
But this is impossible; therefore Christ, the power of God, 
righteousness, blessing, grace, and life, overcometh and 
destroyeth those monsters, sin, death, and the curse, with¬ 
out war and weapons, in this our body, so that they can 
no more hurt those that believe.” 

Such truths are indeed worth battling for; but who, save 
the devil, would war against them? I wonder what Fritz 
would think of it all? 


Wittenberg, February, 1518. 

Christopher returned yesterday evening from the 
market-place where the students have been burning 
Tetzel’s theses, which he wrote in answer to Dr. Luther’s. 
Tetzel hides behind the papal authority, and accuses Dr. 
Luther of assailing the holy father himself. 

But Dr. Luther says nothing shall ever make him a 
heretic; that he will recognize the voice of the pope as the 
voice of Christ himself. The students kindled this con¬ 
flagration in the market-place entirely on their own respon¬ 
sibility. They are full of enthusiasm for Dr. Martin, and 
of indignation against Tetzel and the Dominicans. 

“Who can doubt,” said Christopher, “how the conflict 
will end, between all learning and honesty and truth on the 
one side, and a few contemptible, avaricious monks on 
the other?” And he proceeded to describe to us the con- 


208 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


flagration and the sayings of the students with as much 
exultation as if it had been a victory over Tetzel and the 
indulgence-mongers themselves. 

“But it seems to me,” I said, “that Dr. Luther is not 
so much at ease about it as you are. I have noticed lately 
that he looks grave, and at times very sad. He does not 
seem to think the victory won.” 

“Young soldiers,” said Gottfried, “on the eve of their 
first battle may be as blithe as on the eve of a tourney. 
Veterans are grave before the battle. Their courage comes 
with the conflict. It will be thus, I believe, with Dr. 
Luther. For surely the battle is coming. Already some 
of his old friends fall off. They say the censor at Borne, 
Prierias, has condemned and written against his theses.” 

“But,” rejoined Christopher, “they say also that Pope 
Leo praised Dr. Luther’s genius, and said it was only the 
envy of the monks which found fault with him. Dr. 
Luther believes the pope only needs to learn the truth 
about these indulgence-mongers to disown them at once.” 

“ Honest men believe all men honest until they are proved 
dishonest,” said Gottfreid dryly; “but the Roman court is 
expensive and the indulgences are profitable.” 

This morning our grandmother asked nervously what 
was the meaning of the shouting she had heard yesterday 
in the market-place, and the glare of fire she had seen, and 
the crackling? 

“Only Tetzel’s lying theses,” said Christopher. She 
seemed relieved. 

“In my early days,” she said, “I learned to listen too 
eagerly to sounds like that. But in those times they burned 
other things than books or papers in the market-places. ” 

“Tetzel threatens to do so again,” said Christopher. 

“No doubt they will, if they can,” she replied, and re¬ 
lapsed into silence. 


fritz’s story. 

Augustinian Convent, Mainz. 

November, 1517. 

Seven years have passed since I have written anything 
in this old chronicle of mine, and as in the quiet of this 
convent once more I open it, the ink on the first pages is 


THE SCRONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 209 

already brown with time; yet a strange, familiar fragrance 
breathes from them, as of early spring flowers. My child¬ 
hood comes back to me, with all its devout simplicity; my 
youth, with all its rich prospects and its buoyant, ardent 
hopes. My childhood seems like one of those green quiet 
valleys in my native forests, like the valley of my native 
Eisenach itself, when that one reach of the forest, and that 
one quiet town with its spires and church bells, and that 
one lowly home with its love, its cares, and its twilight 
talks in the lumber-room, were all the world I could see. 

Youth rises before me like that first journey through 
the forest to the University of Erfurt, when the world 
opened to me like the plains from the breezy heights, a 
battlefield for glorious achievement, an unbounded ocean 
for adventure and discovery, a vast field for noble work. 

Then came another brief interval, when once again the 
lowly home at Eisenach became to me dearer and more than 
all the wide world beside, and all the earth and all life 
seemed to grow sacred and to expand before me in the light 
of one pure, holy, loving maiden’s heart. I have seen 
nothing so heaven-like since as she was. But then came 
the great crash which wrenched my life in twain, and made 
home and the world alike forbidden ground to me. 

At first, after that, for years I dared not think of Eva. 
But since my pilgrimage to Rome, I venture to cherish her 
memory again. I thank God every day that nothing can 
erase that image of purity and love from my heart. Had 
it not been for that and for the recollection of Dr. Luther’s 
manly, honest piety, there are times when the very exist¬ 
ence of truth and holiness on earth would have seemed 
inconceivable, such a chaos of corruption has the world 
appeared to me. 

How often has the little lowly hearth-fire, glowing from 
the windows of the old home, saved me from shipwreck, 
when “for many days neither sun nor stars appeared, and 
no small tempest lay on me.” 

For I have lived during these years behind the veil of 
outward shows, a poor insignificant monk, before whom 
none thought it worth while to inconvenience themselves 
with masks or disguises. 

I have spent hour after hour, moreover, in the confes¬ 
sional. I have been in the sacristry before the mass, and 
at the convent feast after it. And I have spent months 


210 


THE 8CH0NBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


once and again at the heart of Christendom, in Rome itself, 
where the indulgences which are now stirring up all Ger¬ 
many are manufactured, and where the money gained by 
the indulgences is spent not entirely on the building of St. 
Peter’s or in holy wars against the Turks! 

Thank God that a voice is raised at last against this cry¬ 
ing, monstrous lie, the honest voice of Dr. Luther. It is 
ringing through all the land. I have just returned from a 
mission through Germany, and I had opportunities of 
observing the etfect of the theses. 

The first time I heard of them was from a sermon in a 
church of the Dominicans in Bavaria. 

The preacher spoke of Dr. Luther by name, and reviled 
the theses as directly inspired by the devil, declaring that 
their wretched author would have a place in hell lower than 
all the heretics, from Simon Magus downward. 

The congregation were roused, and spoke of it as they 
dispersed. Some piously wondered who this new heretic 
could be who was worse even than Huss. Others specu¬ 
lated what this new poisonous doctrine could be; and a 
great many bought a copy of the theses to see. 

In the Augustinian convent that evening they formed 
the subject of warm debate. Not a few of the monks 
triumphed in them as an effective blow for Tetzel and the 
Dominicans. A few rejoiced and said these were the words 
they had been longing to hear for years. Many expressed 
wonder that people should make so much stir about them, 
since they said nothing more than all honest men in the 
land had always thought. 

A few nights afterward I lodged at the house of Ruprecht 
Haller, a priest in a Franconian village. A woman of quiet 
and modest appearance, young in form but worn and old in 
expression, with a subdued, broken-spirited bearing, was 
preparing our supper, and while she was serving the table 
I began to speak to the priest about the theses of Dr. 
Luther. 

He motioned to me to keep silence, and hastily turned 
the conversation. 

When we were left alone he explained his reasons. “I 
gave her the money for an indulgence letter last week, and 
she purchased one from one of Dr. Tetzel’s company,” he 
said; “and when she returned her heart seemed lighter 
than I have seen it for years, since God smote us for our 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


$11 


sins, and little Dietrich died. I would not have her robbed 
of that little bit of comfort for the world, be it true or 
false.” 

Theirs was a sad story, common enough in every town 
and village as regarded the sin, and only uncommon as to 
the longing for better things which yet lingered in the 
hearts of the guilty. 

I suggested her returning to her kindred or entering a 
convent. 

“ She has no kindred left that would receive her,” he 
said; “and to send her to be scorned and disciplined by a 
community of nuns—never!” 

“But her soul!” I said, “and yours?” 

“The blessed Lord received such,” he answered almost 
fiercely, “before the Pharisees.” 

“Such received him!” I said quietly, “but receiving him 
they went and sinned no more.” 

“ And when did God ever say it was sin for a priest to 
marry?” he asked; “not in the Old Testament, for the son 
of Elkanah the priest and Hannah ministered before the 
Lord in the temple, as perhaps our little Dietrich,” he added 
in a low tone, “ministers before Him in his temple now. 
And where in the New Testament do you find it forbidden?” 

“The church forbids it,” I said. 

“Since when?” he asked. “The subject is too near my 
heart for me not to have searched to see. And five hun¬ 
dred years ago, I have read, before the days of Hildebrand 
the pope, many a village pastor had his lawful wife, whom 
he loved as I love Bertha; for God knows neither she nor I 
ever loved another.” 

“Does this satisfy her conscience?” I asked. 

“Sometimes,” he replied bitterly, “but only sometimes. 
Oftener she lives as one under a curse, afraid to receive any 
good thing, and bowing to every sorrow as her bitter desert, 
and the foretaste of the terrible retribution to come.” 

“ Whatever is not of faith is sin,” I murmured. 

“ But what will be the portion of those who call what 
God sanctions sin,” he said, “and bring trouble and pollu¬ 
tion into hearts as pure as hers?” 

The woman entered the room as he was speaking, and 
must have caught his words, for a deep crimson flushed her 
pale face. As she turned away, her whole frame quivered 
with a suppressed sob. But afterward, when the priest 


212 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


left the room, she came up to me and said, looking with 
her sad, dark, lusterless eyes at me, “You were saying that 
some doubt the efficacy of these indulgences? But you do 
not? I cannot trust him” she added softly, “he would 
be afraid to tell me if he thought so.” 

I hesitated what to say. I could not tell an untruth, 
and before those searching, earnest eyes, any attempt at 
evasion would have been vain. 

“You do not believe this letter can do anything for me,” 
she said; “nor do I” And moving quietly to the hearth, 
she tore the indulgence into shreds, and threw it on the 
flames. 

“Do not tell him this,” she said; “he thinks it comforts 
me.” 

I tried to say some words about repentance and forgive¬ 
ness being free to all. 

“Repentance for me,” she said, “would be to leave him, 
would it not?” 

I could not deny it. 

“I will never leave him,” she replied, with a calmness 
which was more like principle than passion. “ He has sac¬ 
rificed life for me; but for me he might have been a great 
and honored man. And do you think I would leave him 
to bear his blighted life alone?” 

Ah! it was no dread of scorn or discipline which kept 
her from the convent. 

For some time I was silenced. I dared neither to re¬ 
proach nor to comfort. At length I said, “Life, whether 
joyful or sorrowful, is very short. Holiness is infinitely 
better than happiness here, and holiness makes happiness 
in the life beyond. If you felt it would be for his good, 
you would do anything, at any cost to yourself, would you 
not?” 

Her eyes filled with tears. “You believe, then, that 
there is some good left even in me,” she said. “For this 
may God bless you,” and silently she left the room. 

Five hundred years ago these two lives might have been 
holy, honorable, and happy; and now! 

I left that house with a heavy heart, and a mind more 
bewildered than before. 

But that pale, worn face; those deep, sad, truthful eyes; 
and that brow, that might have been as pure as the brow 
of a St. Agnes, have haunted me often since. And when¬ 
ever I think of it, I say: 


THE SCHONBEUG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


213 


“God be merciful to them and to me, sinners.” 

For had not my own good, pure, pious mother doubts 
and scruples almost as bitter? Did not she also live too 
often as if under a curse? Who or what has thrown this 
shadow on so many homes? Who that knows the interior 
of many convents dares to say they are holier than homes? 
Who that has lived with, or confessed many monks or nuns, 
can dare to say their hearts are more heavenly than those 
of husband or wife, father or mother? Alas! the questions 
of that priest are nothing new to me. But I dare not 
entertain them. For if monastic life is a delusion, to what 
have I sacrificed hopes which were so absorbing, and might 
have been so pure? 

Regrets are burdens a brave man must cast off. For my 
little life what does it matter? But to see vice shamefully 
reigning in the most sacred places, and scruples, perhaps 
false, staining the purest hearts, who can behold these 
things and not mourn? Crimes a pagan would have ab¬ 
horred atoned for by a few florins; sins which the holy 
Scriptures scarcely seem to condemn weighing on tender 
consciences like crimes! What will be the end of this 
chaos? 

The next night I spent in the castle of an old knight in 
the Thuringian Forest, Otto von Gersdorf. He welcomed 
me very hospitably to his table, at which a stately old lady 
presided, his widowed sister. 

“ What is all this talk about Dr. Luther and his theses?” 
he asked; “only, I suppose, some petty quarrel between 
the monks! And yet my nephew Ulrich thinks there is 
no one on earth like this little Brother Martin. You good 
Augustinians do not like the Black Friars to have all the 
profit; is that it?” he asked, laughing. 

“That is not Dr. Luther’s motive, at all events,” I said; 
“ I do not believe money is more to him than it is to the 
birds of the air.” 

“No, brother,” said the lady; “think of the beautiful 
words our Chriemhild read us from his book on the Lord’s 
prayer. ” 

“Yes; you, and Ulrich, and Chriemhild, and Atlantis,” 
rejoined the old knight, “you are all alike; the little friar 
has bewitched you all.” 

The names of my sisters made my heart beat. 


214 THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

“Does the lady know Chriemhild and Atlantis Cotta?” I 
asked. 

“Come, nephew Ulrich,” said the knight to a young man 
who had just entered the hall from the chase; “tell this 
good brother all yon know of Fraulein Chriemhild Cotta.” 

We were soon the best friends; and long after the old 
knight and his sister had retired, Ulrich von Gersdorf and 
I sat up discoursing about Dr. Luther and his noble words 
and deeds, and of names dearer to us both even than his. 

“Then you are Fritz,” he said musingly, after a pause; 
“the Fritz they all delight to talk of, and think no one 
can ever be equal to. You are the Fritz that Chriemhild 
says her mother always hoped would have wedded that 
angel maiden Eva von Schonberg, who is now a nun at 
Nimptschen; whose hymn-book and ‘Theologia Teutsch’ 
she carried with her to the convent. I wonder you could 
have left her to become a monk,” he continued; “your 
vocation must have been very strong.” 

At that moment it certainly felt very weak. But I would 
not for the world have let him see this, and I said, with as 
steady a voice as I could command, “I believe it was God’s 
will.” 

“Well,” he continued, “it is good for any one to have 
seen her, and to carry that image of purity and piety with 
him into cloister or home. It is better than any painting 
of the saints, to have that angelic, childlike countenance, 
and that voice sweet as church music, in one’s heart.” 

“It is,” I said, and I could not have said a word more. 
Happily for me, he turned to another subject and expatiated 
for a long time on the beauty and goodness of his little 
Chriemhild, who was to be his wife, he said, next year; 
while through my heart only two thoughts remained dis¬ 
tinct, namely, what my mother had wished about Eva and 
me, and that Eva had taken my “ Theologia Teutsch” into 
the convent with her. 

It took some days before I could remove that sweet, 
guileless, familiar face, to the saintly, unearthly height in 
my heart, where only it is safe for me to gaze on it. 

But I believe Ulrich thought me a very sympathizing 
listener, for in about an hour he said: 

“You are a patient and good-natured monk, to listen 
thus to my romances. However, she is youi’ sister, and I 
wish you would be at our wedding. But, at all events, it 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 215 

will be delightful to have news for Chriemhild and all of 
them about Fritz.” 

I had intended to go on to Wittenberg for a few days, 
but after that conversation I did not dare to do so at once. 
I returned to the University of Tubingen, to quiet my 
mind a little with Greek and Hebrew, under the direction 
of the excellent Eeuchlin, it being the will of our vicar- 
general that I should study the languages. 

At Tubingen I found Dr. Luther’s theses the great topic 
of debate. Men of learning rejoiced in the theses as an as¬ 
sault on barbarism and ignorance; men of straightforward 
integrity hailed them as a protest against a system of lies 
and imposture; men of piety gave thanks for them as a de¬ 
fense of holiness and truth. The students enthusiastically 
greeted Dr. Luther as the prince of the new age; the aged 
Eeuchlin and many of the professors recognized him as an 
assailant of old foes from a new point of attack. 

Here I attended for some weeks the lectures of the young 
doctor, Philip Melancthon (then only twenty-one, yet 
already a doctor for four years), until he was summoned to 
Wittenberg, which he reached on the 25th of August, 1518. 

On business of the order, I was deputed about the same 
time on a mission to the Augustinian convent at Witten¬ 
berg, so that I saw him arrive. The disappointment at his 
first appearance was great. Could this little unpretending¬ 
looking youth be the great scholar Eeuchlin had recom¬ 
mended so warmly, and from whose abilities the Elector 
Frederic expected such great results for his new uni¬ 
versity? 

Dr. Luther was among the first to discover the treasure 
hidden in this insignificant frame. But his first Latin 
harangue, four days after his arrival, won the admiration of 
all; and very soon his lecture-room was crowded. 

This was the event which absorbed Wittenberg when 
first I saw it. 

The return to my old home was very strange to me. 
Such a broad barrier of time and circumstance had grown 
up between me and those most familiar to me! 

Else, matronly as she was, with her keys, her stores, her 
large household, and her two children, the baby Fritz and 
Gretchen, was in heart the very same to me as when we 
parted for my first term at Erfurt. Her honest, kind blue 
eyes, had the very same look. But around her was a whole 


216 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


new world of strangers, strange to rne as her own new life, 
with whom I had no links whatever. 

With Chriemhild and the younger children the recollec¬ 
tion of me as the elder brother seemed struggling with their 
reverence for the priest. Christopher appeared to look on 
me with a mixture of pity, and respect, and perplexity, 
which prevented my having any intimate intercourse with 
him at all. 

Only my mother seemed unchanged with regard to me, 
although much more aged and feeble. But in her affection 
there was a clinging tenderness which pierced my heart 
more than the bitterest reproaches. I felt by the silent 
watching of her eyes how she had missed me. 

My father was little altered, except that his schemes ap¬ 
peared to give him a new and placid satisfaction in the very 
impossibility of their fulfillment, and that the relations be¬ 
tween him and my grandmother were much more friendly. 

There was at first a little severity in our grandmother’s 
manner to me, which wore off when we understood how 
much Dr. Luther’s teaching had done for us both; and she 
never wearied of hearing what he had said and done at 
Borne. 

The one who, I felt, would have been entirely the same, 
was gone forever; and I could scarcely regret the absence 
which left that one image undimmed'by the touch of time, 
and surrounded by no barriers of change. 

But of Eva no one spoke to me, except little Thekla, 
who sang to me over and over the Latin hymns Eva had 
taught her, and asked if she sang them at all in the same 
way. 

I told her yes. They were the same words, the same 
melodies, much of the same soft, reverent, innocent man¬ 
ner. > But little Thekla’s voice was deep and powerful, and 
clear like a thrush’s; and Eva’s used to be like the soft 
murmuring of a dove in the depth of some quiet wood— 
hardly a voice at all—an embodied prayer, as if you stood 
at the threshold of her heart, and heard the music of her 
happy, holy, childish thoughts within. 

No, nothing could ever break the echo of that voice to 
me. 

But Thekla and I became great friends. She had 
scarcely known me of old. We became friends as we were. 
There was nothing to recall, nothing to efface. And Cousin 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


.217 


Eva had been to her as a star or angel in heaven, or as if 
she had been another child sent by God out of some beauti¬ 
ful old legend to be her friend. 

Altogether, there was some pain in this visit to my old 
home. I had prayed so earnestly that the blank my departure 
had made might be filled up; but now that I saw it filled, 
and the life of my beloved running its busy course, with 
no place in it for me, it left a dreary feeling of exile on my 
heart. If the dead could thus return, would they feel 
anything of this? Not the holy dead, surely. They would 
rejoice that the sorrow, having wrought its work, should 
cease to be so bitter—that the blank should not, indeed, be 
filled (no true love can replace another), but veiled and 
made fruitful, as time and nature veil all ruins. 

But the holy dead would revisit earth from a home, a 
Father’s house; and that the cloister is not, nor can ever 
be. 

Yet I would gladly have remained at Wittenberg. Com¬ 
pared with Wittenberg, all the world seemed asleep. There 
it was morning, and an atmosphere of hope and activity 
was around my heart. Dr. Luther was there; and, whether 
consciously or not, all who look for better days seem to fix 
their eyes on him. 

But I was sent to Mainz. On my journey thither I 
went out of my way to take a new book of Dr. Luther’s to 
my poor priest Ruprecht in Franconia. His village lay in 
the depths of a pine forest. The book was the exposition 
of the Lord’s Prayer in German, for lay and unlearned 
people. The priest’s house was empty; but I laid the book 
on a wooden seat in the porch, with my name and a few 
words of gratitude for his hospitality. And as I wound 
my way through the forest, I saw from a height on the 
opposite side of the valley a woman enter the porch, and 
stoop to pick up the book, and then stand reading it in the 
doorway. As I turned away, her figure still stood motion¬ 
less in the arch of the porch, with the white leaves of the 
open book relieved against the shadow of the interior. 

I prayed that the words might be written on her heart. 
Wonderful words of holy love and grace I knew were there 
which would restore hope and purity to any heart on which 
they were written. 

And now I am placed in this Augustinian monastery at 
Mainz in the Rhine-land. 


218 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


This convent has its own peculiar traditions. Here is a 
dungeon in which, not forty years ago (in 1481), died John 
of Wesel—the old man who had dared to protest against 
indulgences, and to utter such truths as Dr. Luther is 
upholding now. 

An aged monk of this monastery, who was young when 
John of Wesel died, remembers him, and has often spoken 
to me about him. The inquisitors instituted a process 
against him, which was carried on, like so many others, in 
the secret of the cloister. 

It was said that he made a general recantation, but that 
two accusations which were brought against him he did not 
attempt in his defense to deny. They were these: “That 
it is not his monastic life which saves any monk, but the 
grace of God;” and, “That the same Holy Spirit who in¬ 
spired the holy Scriptures alone can interpret them with 
power to the heart.” 

The inquisitors burned his books; at which, my inform¬ 
ant said, the old man wept. 

“Why,” he said, “should men be so inflamed against 
him ? There was so much in his books that was good, and 
must they be all burned for the little evil that was mixed 
with the good? Surely this was man’s judgment, not 
God’s—not his who would have spared Sodom, at Abra¬ 
ham’s prayer, for but ten righteous, had they been found 
there. Oh God,” he sighed, “must the good perish with 
the evil?” 

But the inquisitors were not to be moved. The books 
were condemned and ignominiously burned in public, the 
old man’s name was branded with heresy; and he himself 
was silenced, and left in the convent prison to die. 

I asked the monk who told me of this, what were the 
especial heresies for which John of Wesel was condemned. 

“ Heresies against the church, I believe,” he replied. “ I 
have heard him in his sermons declare that the church was 
becoming like what the Jewish nation was in the days of 
our Lord. He protested against the secular splendors of 
the priests and prelates—against the cold ceremonial into 
which he said the services had sunk, and the empty super¬ 
stitions which were substituted for true piety of heart and 
life. He said that the salt had lost its savor; that many 
of the priests were thieves and robbers, and not shepherds, 
that the religion in fashion was little better than that of 


TEE SCHOflBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


219 


the Pharisees who put our Lord to death—a cloak for spirit¬ 
ual pride, and narrow, selfish bitterness. He declared that 
divine and ecclesiastical authority were of very different 
weight; that the outward professing church was to be dis¬ 
tinguished from the true living church of Christ; that the 
power of absolution given to the priests was sacramental, 
and not judicial. In a sermon at Worms, I once heard him 
say he thought little of the pope, the church or the coun¬ 
cils, as a foundation to build our faith upon. ‘Christ 
alone,’ he declared, ‘I praise. May the word of Christ 
dwell in us richly.’ ” 

“ They were bold words,” I remarked. 

“More than that,” replied the aged monk; “John of 
Wesel protested that what the Bible did not hold as sin, 
neither could he; and he is even reported to have said, ‘eat 
on fast days, if thou art hungry. ’ ” 

“That is a concession many of the monks scarcely need,” 
I observed. “His life, then, was not condemned, but only 
his doctrine.” 

“I was sorry,” the old monk resumed, “that it was 
necessary to condemn him; for from that time to this, I 
never have heard preaching that stirred the heart like his. 
When he ascended the pulpit, the church was thronged. 
The laity understood and listened to him as eagerly as the 
religious. It was a pity he was a heretic, for I do not ex¬ 
pect ever to hear his like again.” 

“You have never heard Dr. Luther preach?” I said. 

“ Dr. Luther who wrote those theses they are talking so 
much of?” he asked. “Do the people throng to hear his 
sermons, and hang on his words as if they were words of 
life?” 

“ They do,” I replied. 

“Then,” rejoined the old monk softly, “let Dr. Luther 
take care. That was the way with so many of the heretical 
preachers. With John of Goch at Mechlin, and John 
Wesel whom they expelled from Paris, I have heard it was 
just the same. But,” he continued, “if Dr. Luther comes 
to Mainz, I will certainly try to hear him. I should like, 
to have my cold, dry, old heart moved like that again. 
Often when I read the holy gospels his words come back. 
Brother, it was like the breath of life.” 

The last man that ventured to say in the face of Ger¬ 
many that man’s word is not to be placed on an equality 


220 


THE SGHONBERQ-GOTTA FAMILY. 


with God’s, and that the Bible is the only standard of 
truth, and the one rule of right and wrong—this is how he 
died! 

How will it be with the next—with the man that is pro¬ 
claiming this in the face of the world now ? 

The old monk turned back to me, after we bad separated, 
and said, in a low voice: 

“Tell Dr. Luther to take warning by John of Wesel. 
Holy men and great preachers may so easily become heretics 
without knowing it. And yet,” he added, “to preach such 
sermons as John of Wesel, I am not sure it is not worth 
while to die in prison. I think I could be content to die, 
if I could hear one such again! Tell Dr. Luther to take 
care; but, nevertheless if he comes to Mainz I will hear 
him.” 

The good, then, in John of Wesel’s words, has not per¬ 
ished, in spite of the flames. 


PART XIV. 

else’s story. 

Wittenberg, July 13, 1520. 

Many events have happened since last I wrote, both in 
this little world and in the large world outside. Our 
Gretchen has two little brothers, who are as ingenious in 
destruction, and seem to have as many designs against their 
own welfare, as their uncle had at their age, and seem likely 
to perplex Gretchen, dearly as she loves them, much as 
Christopher and Pollux did me. Chriemhild is married, 
and has gone to her home in the Thuringian Forest. At¬ 
lantis is betrothed to Conrad Winkelried, a Swiss student. 
Pollux is gone to Spain, on some mercantile affairs of the 
Eisenach house of Cotta, in which he is a partner; and 
Fritz has been among us once more. That is now about 
two years since. He was certainly much graver than of 
old. Indeed he often looked more than grave, as if some 
weight of sorrow rested on him. But with our mother and 
the children he was always cheerful. 

Gretchen and Uncle Fritz formed the strongest mutual 



THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


221 


attachment, and to this day she often asks me when he will 
come back; and nothing delights her more than to sit on 
my knee before his picture, and hear me tell over and over 
again the stories of our old talks in the lumber-room at 
Eisenach, or of the long days we used to spend in the pine 
forests, gathering wood for the winter fires. She thinks 
no festival could be so delightful as that; and her favorite 
amusement is to gather little bundles of willow or oak twigs, 
by the river Elbe or on the Diiben Heath and bring them 
home for household use. All the splendid puppets and 
toys her father brings her from Nuremberg or has sent 
from Venice do not give her half the pleasure that she finds 
in the heath when he takes her there and she returns with 
her little apron full of dry sticks, and her hand as brown 
and dirty as a little wood-cutter’s, fancying she is doing 
what Uncle Fritz and I did when we were children, and 
being useful. 

Last summer she was endowed with a special apple and 
pear tree of her own, and the fruit of these she stores with 
her little faggots to give at Christmas to a poor old woman 
we know. 

Gottfried and I want the children to learn early that pure 
joy of giving, and of doing kindnesses, which transmutes 
wealth from dust into true gold, and prevents these posses¬ 
sions which are .such good servants from becoming our mas¬ 
ters, and reducing us, as they seem to do so many wealthy 
people, into the mere slaves and hired guardians of things. 

I pray God often that the experience of poverty which I 
had for so many years may never be lost. It seems to me a 
gift God has given me, just as a course at the university is 
a gift. I have graduated in the school of poverty, and 
God grant I may never forget the secrets of poverty taught 
me about the struggles and wants of the poor. 

The room in which I write now, with its carpets, pic¬ 
tures, and carved furniture, is very different from the dear 
bare old lumber-room where I began my chronicle; and the 
inlaid ebony and ivory cabinet on which my paper lies is a 
different desk from the piles of old books where I used to 
trace the first pages slowly in a childish hand. But the 
poor man’s luxuries will always be the most precious to me. 
The warm sunbeams, shining through the translucent vine- 
leaves at the open window, are fairer than all the jewel-like 
Venetian glass of the closed casements which are now dying 


222 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


crimson the pages of Dr. Luther’s Commentary, left open 
on the window-seat an hour since by Gottfried. 

But how can I be writing so much about my own tiny 
world, when all the world around me is agitated by such 
great fears and hopes? 

At this moment, through the open window, I see Dr. 
Luther and Dr. Philip Melancthon walking slowly up the 
street in close conversation. The hum of their voices 
reaches me here, although they are talking low. How 
different they look, and are; and yet what friends they 
have become! Probably, in a great degree, because of the 
difference. The one looks like a veteran soldier, with his 
rock-like brow, his dark eyes, his vigorous form, and his 
firm step; the other, with his high, expanded forehead, his 
thin, worn face, and his slight, youthful frame, like a com¬ 
bination of a young student and an old philosopher. 

Gottfried says God has given them to each other and to 
Germany, blessing the church as he does the world by the 
union of opposites, rain and sunshine, heat and cold, sea 
and land, husband and wife. 

How those two great men (for Gottfried says Dr. Melanc¬ 
thon is great, and I know Dr. Luther is) love and reverence 
each other! Dr. Luther says he is but the fore-runner, 
and Melancthon the true prophet! that he is but the wood¬ 
cutter clearing the forest with rough blows, that Dr. Philip 
may sow the precious seed; and when he went to encounter 
the legate at Augsburg, he wrote, that if Philip lived it 
mattered little what became of him. 

But we do not think so, nor does Dr. Melancthon. “ No 
one,” he says, “comes near Dr. Luther, and indeed the 
heart of the whole nation hangs on him. Who stirs the 
heart of Germany—of nobles, peasants, princes, women, 
children—as he does with his noble, faithful words?” 

Twice during these last years we have been in the greatest 
anxiety about his safety—once when he was summoned be¬ 
fore the legate at Augsburg, and once when he went to the 
great disputation with Dr. Eck at Leipsic. 

But how great the difference between his purpose when 
he went to Augsburg, and when he returned from Leipsic! 

At Augsburg he would have conceded anything, but the 
truth about the free justification of every sinner who be¬ 
lieves in Christ. He reverenced the pope, he would not 
for the world become a heretic. No name of opprobrium 
was so terrible to him as that. 



THE SCHONBERG-C0TTA FAMILY. 


223 


At Leipsic he had learned to disbelieve that the pope had 
any authority to determine doctrine, and he boldly confessed 
that the Hussites (men till now abhorred in Saxony as 
natural enemies as well as deadly heretics) ought to be 
honored for confessing sound truth. And from that time 
both Hr. Lutlier and Melancthon have stood forth openly 
as the champions of the word of God against the papacy. 

Now, however, a worse danger threatens him, even the 
bull of excommunication which they say is now being forged 
at Rome, and which has never yet failed to crush where it 
has fallen. Dr. Luther has, indeed, taught us not to dread 
it as a spiritual weapon, but we fear its temporal effects, 
especially if followed by the ban of the empire. 

Often, indeed, he talks of taking refuge in some other 
land; the good elector, even, himself, has at times advised 
it, fearing no longer to be able to protect him. But God 
preserve him to Germany. 


June 23, 1520. 

This evening, as we were sitting in my father’s house, 
Christopher brought us, damp from the press, a copy of 
Dr. Luther’s appeal to his imperial majesty, and to the 
Christian nobility of the German nation, on the reforma¬ 
tion of Christendom. Presenting it to our grandmother, 
he said: 

“Here, madam, is a weapon worthy of the bravest days 
of the Schonbergs, mighty to the pulling down of strong¬ 
holds.” 

“Ah,” sighed our mother, “always wars and fightings! 
It is a pity the good work cannot be done more quietly.” 

“Ah, grandmother,” said my father, “only see how her 
burgher-life has destroyed the heroic spirit of her crusading 
ancestors. She thinks that the holy places are to be won 
back from the infidels without a blow, only by begging 
their pardon and kissing the hem of their garments.” 

“You should hear Catherine Krapp, Dr. Melanctbon’s 
wife!” rejoined our mother; “ she agrees with me that these 
are terrible times. She says she never sees the doctor go 
away without thinking he may be immured in some dread¬ 
ful dungeon before they meet again.” 

“But remember, dear mother,” I said, “your fears when 
first Dr. Luther assailed Tetzel and his indulgences three 
years ago! And who has gained the victory there! Dr. 


224 


TEE SCEONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Martin is the admiration of all good men throughout Ger¬ 
many; and poor Tetzel, despised by his own party, rebuked 
by the legate, died, they say, of a broken heart just after 
the great Leipsic disputation.” 

“Poor Tetzel!” said my mother “his indulgences could 
not hind up a broken heart. I shall always love Dr. 
Luther for writing him a letter of comfort when he was 
dying, despised and forsaken even by his own party. I 
trust that He who can pardon has had mercy on his soul.” 

“Bead to us, Christopher,” said our grandmother; “your 
mother would not shrink from any battlefield if there were 
wounds there which her hands could bind.” 

“No,” said Gottfried, “the end of war is peace, God’s 
peace, based on his truth. Blessed are those whom the 
struggle never lose sight of the end.” 

Christopher read, not without interrupion. Many 
things in the book were new and startling to most of us: 

“It is not rashly,” Dr. Luther began, “that I, a man of 
the people, undertake to address your lordships. The 
wretchedness and oppression that now overwhelm all the 
states of Christendom, and Germany in particular, force 
from me a cry of distress. I am constrained to call for 
help; I must see whether God will not bestow his Spirit on 
some man belonging to our country, and stretch forth his 
hand to our unhappy nation.” 

Dr. Luther never seems to think he is to do the great 
work. He speaks as if he were only fulfilling some plain 
humble duty, and calling other men to undertake the great 
achievement; and all the while that humble duty is the 
great achievement, and he is doing it. 

Dr. Luther spoke of the wretchedness of Italy, the un¬ 
happy land where the pope’s throne is set, her ruined 
monasteries, her decayed cities, her corrupted people; and 
thetfi he showed how Koman avarice and pride were seeking 
to reduce Germany to a state as enslaved. He appealed to 
the young emperor, Charles, soon about to be crowned. 
He reminded all the rulers of their responsibilities. He 
declared that the papal territory, called the patrimony of 
St. Peter, was the fruit of robbery. Generously holding 
out his hand to the very outcasts his enemies had sought to 
insult him most grievously by comparing him with, he 
said: 

“ It is time that we were considering the cause of the 
Bohemians, and reuniting ourselves to them.” 


THE SCHO MB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


225 


At these words my grandmother dropped her work, and 
fervently clasping her hands, leaned forward, and fixing her 
eyes on Christopher, drank in every word with intense 
eagerness. 

When he came to the denunciation of the begging friars, 
and the recommendation that the parish priests should 
marry, Christopher interrupted himself by an enthusiastic 
“vivat” 

When, however, after a vivid picture of the oppressions 
and avarice of the legates, came the solemn abjuration: 

“ Hearest thou this, oh pope, not most holy but most 
sinful? May God from the heights of his heaven soon hurl 
thy throne into the abyss!” my mother turned pale and 
crossed herself. 

What impressed me most was the plain declaration: 

“It has been alleged that the pope, the bishops, the 
priests, and the monks and nuns form the estate spiritual 
or ecclesiastical; while the princes, nobles, burgesses and 
peasantry form the secular estate or laity. Let no man, 
however, be alarmed at this. All Christians constitute the 
spiritual estate; and the only difference among them is that 
of the functions which they discharge. We have all one 
baptism, one faith, and it is this which constitutes the 
spiritual man.” 

If this is indeed true, how many of my old difficulties it 
removes with a stroke! All callings, then, may be religious 
callings; all men and women of a religious order. Then 
my mother is truly and undoubtedly as much treading 
the way appointed her as Aunt Agnes; and the monastic 
life is only one among callings equally sacred. 

When I said this to my mother, she said, “ I as religious 
a woman as Aunt Agnes! No, Else! whatever Dr. Luther 
ventures to declare, he would not say that. I do sometimes 
have a hope that for his dear Son’s sake God hears even 
my poor feeble prayers; but to pray night and day, and 
abandon all for God, like my sister Agnes, that is another 
thing altogether.” 

But when, as we crossed the street to our home, I told 
Gottfried how much those words of Dr. Luther had touched 
me, and asked if he really thought we in our secular call¬ 
ing were not only doing our work by a kind of indirect 
permission, but by a direct vocation from God, he replied: 

“ My doubt, Else, is whether the vocation which leads 


TEE SCEONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


m 

men to abandon home is from God at all; whether it has 
either his command or even his permission.” 

But if Gottfried is right, Fritz has sacrificed his life to 
a delusion. How can I belive that? And yet if he could 
perceive it, how life might change for him! Might he not 
even yet be restored to us? But I am dreaming. 

October 25, 1520. 

More and more burning words from Dr. Luther. To¬ 
day we have been reading his new book on the Babylonish 
Captivity. “God has said,” he writes in this, “‘Who¬ 
soever shall believe and be baptized shall be saved. ’ On 
this promise, if we receive it with faith, hangs our whole 
salvation. If we believe, our heart is fortified by the divine 
promise; and although all should forsake the believer, this 
promise which he believes will never forsake him. With it 
he will resist the adversary who rushes upon his soul and 
will have wherewithal to answer pitiless death, and even the 
judgment of God.” And he says in another place, “The 
vow made at our baptism is sufficient of itself, and compre¬ 
hends more than we can ever accomplish. Hence all other 
vows may be abolished. Whoever enters the priesthood or 
any religious order, let him well understand that the works 
of a monk or of a priest, however difficult they may be, 
differ in no respect in the sight of God from those of a 
countryman who tills the ground, or of a woman who con¬ 
ducts a household. God values all things by the standard 
of faith. And it often happens that the simple labor of a 
male or female servant is more agreeable to God than the 
fasts and the works of a monk, because in these faith is 
wanting.” 

What a consecration this thought gives to my commonest 
duties! Yes, when I am directing the maids in their work, 
or sharing Gottfried’s cares, or simply trying to brighten 
his home at the end of the busy day, or lulling my children 
to sleep, can I indeed be serving God as much as Dr. 
Luther at the altar or in his lecture-room? I also, then, 
have indeed my vocation direct from God. 

How could I ever have thought the mere publication of 
a book would have been an event to stir our hearts like the 
arrival of a friend! Yet it is even thus with every one of 
those pamphlets of Dr. Luther’s. They move the whole 
of our two households, from our grandmother to Thekla, 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


227 


and even the little maid, to whom I read portions. She 
says, with tears, “If the mother and father could hear this 
in the forest!” Students and burghers have not patience 
to wait till they reach home, but read the heart-stirring 
pages as they walk through the streets. And often an audi¬ 
ence collects around some communicative reader, who 
cannot be content with keeping the free, liberating truths 
to himself. 

Already, Christopher says, four thousand copies of the 
“ Appeal to the Nobility,” are circulating through Germany. 

I always thought before of books as the peculiar prop¬ 
erty of the learned. But Dr. Luther’s books are a living 
voice—a heart God has awakened and taught, speaking 
to countless hearts as a man talketh with his friend. I 
can indeed see now, with my father and Christopher, that 
the printing-press is a nobler weapon than even the spears 
and broadswords of our knightly Bohemian ancestors. 

Wittenberg, December 10, 1520. 

Dr. Luther has taken a great step to-day. He has 
publicly burned the Decretals, with other ancient writ¬ 
ings, on which the claims of the court of Rome are 
founded, but which are now declared to be forgeries; and 
more than this, he has burned the pope’s bull of excommuni¬ 
cation against himself. 

Gottfried says that for centuries such a bonfire as this 
has not been seen. He thinks it means nothing less than 
an open and deliberate renunciation of the papal tyranny 
which for so many hundred years has held the whole of 
western Christendom in bondage. He took our two boys 
to see it, that we may remind them of it in after years as 
the first great public act of freedom. 

Early in the morning the town was astir. Many of the 
burghers, professors, and students knew what was about 
to be done; for this was no deed of impetuous haste or 
angry vehemence. 

I dressed the children early, and we went to my father’s 
house. 

Wittenberg is as full now of people of various languages 
as the tower of Babel must have been after the confusion of 
tongues. But never was this more manifest than to-day. 

Flemish monks from the Augustine cloisters at Antwerp; 
Dutch students from Finland; Swiss youths, with their 


22 S 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


erect forms and free mountain gait; knights from Prussia 
and Lithuania; strangers even from quite foreign lands, all 
attracted hither by Dr. Luther’s living words of truth, 
passed under our windows about nine o’clock this morning, 
in the direction of the Elster gate, eagerly gesticulating 
and talking as they went. Then Thekla, Atlantis, and I 
mounted to an upper room, and watched the smoke rising 
from the pile, until the glare of the conflagration burst 
through it, and stained with a faint red the pure daylight. 

Soon afterward the crowds began to return; but there 
seemed to me to be a gravity and solemnity in the manner of 
most, different from the eager haste with which they had 
gone forth. 

“ They seem like men returning from some great church 
festival,” I said. 

“ Or from the lighting of a signal-fire on the mountains, 
which shall wake the whole land to freedom,” said Christo¬ 
pher, as they rejoined us. 

“ Or from binding themselves with a solemn oath to liber¬ 
ate their homes, like the Three Men at Gruth,” said Con¬ 
rad Winkelried, the young Swiss to whom Atlantis is 
betrothed. 

“Yes,” said Gottfried, “fires which may be the beacons 
of a world’s deliverance, and may kindle the death-piles of 
those who dared to light them, are no mere students’ 
bravado.” 

“Who did the deed, and what was burned?” I asked. 

“One of the masters of arts lighted the pile,” my hus¬ 
band replied, “and then threw on it the Decretals, the false 
Epistles of St. Clement, and other forgeries, which have 
propped up the edifice of lies for centuries. And when the 
flames which consumed them had done their work and died 
away, Dr. Luther himself, stepping forward, solemnly laid 
the pope’s bull of excommunication on the fire, saying 
amid the breathless silence, ‘As thou hast troubled the 
Lord’s saints, may the eternal fire destroy thee.’ Not a 
word broke the silence until the last crackle and gleam of 
those symbolical flames had ceased, and then gravely but 
joyfully we all returned to our homes.” 

“Children,” said our grandmother, “you have done well; 
>u are not the first that have defied Rome.” 



“ JN or perhaps the last she will silence,” said my husband. 
“But the last enemy will be destroyed at last; and mean¬ 
time every martyr is a victor.” 


THE SGHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 229 

EVA’S STORY. 

I have read the whole of the New Testament through 
to Sister Beatrice and Annt Agnes. Strangely different 
auditors they were in powers of mind and in experience of 
life; yet both met, like so many in his days on earth, at the 
feet of Jesus. 

“He would not have despised me, even me,” Sister 
Beatrice would say. “ Poor, fond creature, half-witted or 
half-crazed, they call me; but he would have welcomed 
me.” 

“Does he not welcome you?” I said. 

“You think so? Yes, I think—I am sure he does. My 
poor broken bits and remnants of sense and love, he will 
not despise them. He will take me as I am.” 

One day when I had been reading to them the chapter in 
St. Luke with the parables of the lost money, the lost 
sheep, and the prodigal. Aunt Agnes, resting her cheek on 
her thin hand, and fixing her large dark eyes on me, lis¬ 
tened with intense expectation to the end; and then she 
said: 

“Is that all, my child? Begin the next chapter.” 

I began about the rich man and the unjust steward; but 
before I had read many words: 

“That will do,” she said in a disappointed tone. “It is 
another subject. Then not one of the Pharisees came, 
after all! If I had been there among the hard, proud 
Pharisees—as I might have been when he began, wonder¬ 
ing, no doubt, that he could so forget himself as to eat 
with publicans and sinners—if I had been there, and had 
heard him speak thus, Eva, I must have fallen at his feet 
and said, ‘Lord, I am a Pharisee no more—I am the lost 
sheep, not one of the ninety and nine—the wandering child, 
not the elder brother. Place me low, low among the pub¬ 
licans and sinners—lower than any; but only say thou 
earnest also to seek me, even me .’ And, child, he would not 
have sent me away. But, Eva,” she added after a pause, 
wiping away the tears which ran slowly over her withered 
cheeks, “ is it not said anywhere that one Pharisee came to 
him?” 

I looked, and could find it nowhere stated positively that 
one Pharisee had abandoned his pride, and self-righteous¬ 
ness, and treasures of good works for Jesus. It seemed all 


230 TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

on the side of the publicans. Aunt Agnes was at times 
distressed. 

“And yet,” she said, “I have come. I am no longer 
among those who think themselves righteous and despise 
others. But I must come in behind all. It is I, not the 
woman who was a sinuer, who am the miracle of his grace; 
for since no sin so keeps men from him as spiritual pride, 
there can be no sin so degrading in the sight of the pure 
and humble angels, or of the Lord. But look again, Eva! 
Is there not one instance of such as I being saved?” 

I found the history of Nicodemus, and we traced it 
through the gospel from the secret visit to the popular 
teacher at night, to the open confession of the rejected 
Saviour before his enemies. 

Aunt Agnes thought this might be the example, she 
sought; but she wished to be quite sure. 

“ Nicodemus came in humility to learn,” she said. “We 
never read that he despised others, or thought he could 
make himself a saint.” 

At length we came to the Acts of the Apostles, and 
there, indeed, we found the history of one, “of the straitest 
sect, a Pharisee,” who verily thought himself doing God 
service by persecuting the despised Nazarenes to death. 
And from that time Aunt Agnes sought out and cherished 
every fragment of St. Paul’s history, and every sentence of 
his sermons and writings. She had found the example she 
sought of the “ Pharisee who was saved,” in him who ob¬ 
tained mercy, “that in him first God might show forth the 
riches of his long-suffering to those who thereafter, through 
his word, should believe.” 

She determined to learn Latin, that she might read these 
divine words for herself. It was affecting to see her sit¬ 
ting among tlie novices whom I taught, carefully spelling 
out the words, and repeating the declensions and conjuga¬ 
tions. I had no such patient pupil; for although many 
were eager at first, not a few relaxed after a few weeks’ toil, 
not finding the results very apparent, and said it would 
never sound so natural and true as when Sister Ave trans¬ 
lated it for them into German. 

I wish some learned man would translate the Bible into 
German. Why does not some one think of it? There is 
one German translation from the Latin, the prioress says, 
mads about thirty or forty years ago; but it is very large 


TEE SCHON BERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


231 


and costly, and not in language that attracts simple people. 
I wish the pope would spend some of the money from the 
indulgences on a new translation of the New Testament. 
I think it would please God much more than building St. 
Peter’s. 

Perhaps, however, if people had the German New Testa¬ 
ment they would not buy the indulgences; for in all the 
Gospels and Epistles I cannot find one word about buying 
pardons; and, what is more strange, not a word about 
adoring the blessed virgin, or about nunneries or monas¬ 
teries. I cannot see that the holy apostles founded one 
such community, or recommended any one to do so. 

Indeed, there is so much in the New Testament, and in 
what I have read of the Old, about not worshiping any 
one but God, that I have quite given up saying any prayers 
to the blessed mother, for many reasons. 

In the first place, I am much more sure that our Lord 
can hear us always than his mother, because he so often 
says so. And I am much more sure he can help, because I 
know all power is given to him in heaven and in earth. 

And in the next place, if I were quite sure that the 
blessed Virgin and the saints could hear me always, and 
could help or would intercede, I am sure also that no one 
among them—not the holy mother herself—is half so com¬ 
passionate and full of love, or could understand us so well, 
as he who died for us. In the jGospels, he was always more 
accessible than the disciples. St. Peter might be impatient 
in the impetuosity of his zeal. Loving indignation might 
overbalance the forbearance of St. John the beloved, and 
he might wish for fire from heaven on those who refused to 
receive his master. All the holy apostles rebuked the poor 
mothers who brought their children, and would have sent 
away the woman of Canaan; but he tenderly took the little 
ones into his arms from the arms of the mothers the dis¬ 
ciples had rebuked. His patience was never wearied; he 
never misunderstood or discouraged any one. Therefore I 
pray to him and our Father in heaven alone, and through 
him alone. Because if he is more pitiful to sinners than 
all the saints, which of all the saints can be beloved of God 
as he is, the well-beloved Son? He seems all ; everything in 
every circumstance we can ever want. Higher mediation 
we cannot find, tenderer love we cannot crave. 

And very sure I am that the meek mother of the Lord, 


232 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


the disciple whom Jesus loved, the apostle who determined 
to know nothing among his converts save Jesus Christ, and 
him crucified, will not regret any homage transferred from 
them to him. 

Nay, rather, if the blessed virgin and the holy apostles 
have heard how, through all these years, such grievous and 
unjust things have been said of their Lord; how his love 
has been misunderstood, and he has been represented as 
hard to be entreated—he who entreated sinners to come and 
be forgiven; has not this been enough to shadow their 
happiness, even in heaven? 

A nun has lately been transferred to our convent, who 
came originally from Bohemia, where all her relatives had 
been slain for adhering to the party of John Huss, the 
heretic. She is much older than I am, and she says she 
remembers well the name of my family, and that my great- 
uncle, Aunt Agnes’ father, died a heretic! She cannot 
tell what the heresy was, but she believes it was something 
about the blessed sacrament and the authority of the pope. 
She had heard that otherwise he was a charitable and holy 
man. 

Was my father, then, a Hussite? 

I have found the end of the sentence he gave me as his 
dying legacy: “God so loved the world, that he gave his 
only begotten Son, that whosoever helievetli in him should 
not 'perish , hut have everlasting life” And instead of 
being in a book not fit for Christian children to read, as 
the priest who took it from me said, it is in the holy Scrip¬ 
tures! 

Can it be possible that the world has come round again 
to the state it was in when the rulers and priests put the 
Saviour to death, and St. Paul persecuted the disciples as 
heretics? 


NlMPTSCHEN, 1520. 

A wonderful book of Dr. Luther’s appeared among us 
a few weeks since, on the Babylonish Captivity; and 
although it was taken from us by the authorities, as dan¬ 
gerous reading for nuns, this was not before many among 
us had become acquainted with its contents. And it has 
created a great ferment in the convent. Some say they are 
words of impious blasphemy; some say they are words of 
living truth. He speaks of the forgiveness of sins being 


THE SCIIONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


233 


free; of the pope and many of the priests being the enemies 
of the truth of God; and of the life and calling of a monk 
or nun as in no way holier than that of any humble believ¬ 
ing secular man or woman, a nun no holier than a wife or 
a household servant! 

This many of the older nuns think plain blasphemy. 
Aunt Agnes says it is true, and more than true; for, from 
what I tell her, there can be no doubt that Aunt Cotta has 
been a lowlier and holier woman all her life than she can 
ever hope to be. 

And as to the Bible precepts, they certainly seem far more 
adapted to people living in homes than to those secluded in 
convents. Often when I am teaching the young novices 
the precepts in the Epistles, they say: 

“ But Sister Ave, find some precepts for us. These say¬ 
ings are for children, and wives, and mothers, and brothers, 
and sisters; not for those who have neither home nor kin¬ 
dred on earth.” 

Then if I try to speak of loving God and the blessed 
Saviour, some of them say: 

“ But we cannot bathe his feet with tears, or anoint them 
with ointment, or bring him food, or stand by his cross, as 
the good women did of old. Shut up here, away from 
every one, how can we show him that we love him?” 

And I can only say, “Dear sisters, you are here now; 
therefore surely God will find some way for you to serve 
him here.” 

But my heart aches for them, and I doubt no longer, I 
feel sure God can never have meant these young, joyous 
hearts to be cramped and imprisoned thus. 

Sometimes I talk about it with Aunt Agnes; and we con¬ 
sider whether, if these vows are indeed irrevocable, and 
these children must never see their homes again, the con¬ 
vent could not one day be removed to some city where sick 
and suffering men and women toil and die; so that we 
might, at least, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and 
visit and minister to the sick and sorrowful. That would 
be life once more instead of this monotonous routine,, 
which is not so much death as mechanism—an inanimate 
existence which has never been life. 


October, 1520. 

Sister Beatrice is very ill. Aunt Agnes has requested 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMIL Y. 


234 


as an especial favor to be allowed to share the attending on 
her with me. Never was gentler nurse or more grateful 
patient. 

It goes to my heart to see Aunt Agnes meekly learning 
from me how to render the little services required at the 
sick-bed. She smiles, and says her feeble, blundering fin¬ 
gers had grown into mere machines for turning over the 
leaves of prayer-books, just as her heart was hardening into 
a machine for saying prayers. Nine of the young nuns, 
Aunt Agnes, Sister Beatrice, and I, have been drawn very 
closely together of late. Among the noblest of these is 
Catharine von Bora, a young nun, about twenty years of 
age. There is such truth in her full, dark eyes, which look 
so kindly and frankly into mine, and such character in the 
firmly closed mouth. She declines learning Latin, and 
has not much taste for learned books; but she has much 
clear, practical good sense, and she, with many others, 
delights greatly in Dr. Luther’s writings. They say they 
are not books; they are a living voice. Every fragment of 
information I can give them about the doctor is eagerly 
received, aud many rumors reach us of his influence in the 
world. When he was near Nimptschen, two years ago, at 
the great Leipsic disputation, we heard that the students 
were enthusiastic about him, and that the common people 
seemed to drink in his words almost as they did our Lord’s 
when he spoke upon earth; and what is more, that the lives 
of some men and women at the court have been entirely 
changed since they had heard him. We were told he had 
been the means of wonderful conversions; but what was 
strange in these conversions was, that those so changed did 
not abandon their position in life, but only their sins, re¬ 
maining where they were when God called them, and dis¬ 
tinguished from others, not by a veil or cowl, but by the 
light of holy works. 

On the other hand, many, especially among the older 
nuns, have received quite contrary impressions, and regard 
Dr. Luther as a heretic, worse than any one who ever rent 
the church. These look very suspiciously on us, and sub¬ 
ject us to many annoyances, hindering our conversing 
and reading together as much as possible. 

We do, indeed, many of us wonder that Dr. Luther 
should use such fierce and harsh words against the pope’s 
servants. Yet St. Paul even “ could have wished that those 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


235 


were cut off” that troubled his flock; and the very lips of 
divine love launched woes against hypocrites and false 
shepherds severer than any that the Baptist or Elijah ever 
uttered in their denunciations from the wilderness. It 
seems to me that the hearts which are tenderest toward the 
wandering sheep will ever be severest against the seducing 
shepherds who lead them astray. Only we need always to 
remember that these very false shepherds themselves are, 
after all, but wretched lost sheep, driven hither and thither 
by the great robber of the fold. 


1521. 

Just now the hearts of the little band among us who owe 
so much to Dr. Luther are lifted up night and day in 
prayer to God for him. He is soon to be on his way to the 
imperial diet at Worms. He has the emperor’s safe-con¬ 
duct, but it is said this did not save John Huss from the 
flames. In our prayers we are much aided by his own 
commentary on the book of Psalms, which I have just re¬ 
ceived from Uncle Cotta’s printing-press. 

This is now Sister Beatrice’s great treasure, as I sit by her 
bedside and read it to her. 

He says that “ the mere frigid use of the Psalms in the 
canonical hours, though little understood, brought some 
sweetness of the breath of life to humble hearts of old, like 
the faint fragrance in the air not far from a bed of roses.” 

He says, “All other books give us the words and deeds 
of the saints, but this gives us their inmost souls.” He" 
calls the Psalter “the little Bible.” “There,” he says, 
“you may look into the hearts of the saints as into paradise, 
or into the opened heavens, and see the fair flowers or the 
shining stars, as it were, of their affections springing or 
beaming up to God, in response to his benefits and blessing.” 

March, 1521. 

News has reached me to-day from Wittenberg which 
makes me feel indeed that the days when people deem they 
do God service by persecuting those who love him, are too 
truly come back. Thekla writes me that they have thrown 
Fritz into the convent prison at Mainz, for spreading Dr. 
Luther’s doctrine among the monks. A few lines sent 
through a friendly monk have told them of this. She sent 
them on to me. 


236 


THE SCHONBEHG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“My beloved ones,” he writes, “I am in the prison 
where, forty years ago, John of Wesel died for the truth. 
I am ready to die if God wills it so. His truth is worth 
dying for, and his love will strengthen me. But if I can I 
will escape, for the truth is worth living for. If, however, 
you do not hear of me again, know that the truth I died 
for is Christ’s, and that the love which sustained me is 
Christ himself. And likewise, that to the last I pray for 
you all, and for Eva; and tell her that the thought of her 
has helped me often to believe in goodness and truth, and 
that I look assuredly to meet her and all of you again. 
Friedrich Schonberg-Cotta.” 

The prison! death itself cannot more completely sepa¬ 
rate Fritz and me. Indeed, of death itself I have often 
thought as bringing us a step nearer, rending one veil be¬ 
tween us. Yet, now that it seems so possible—that perhaps 
it has already come—I feel there was a kind of indefinable 
sweetness in being only on the same earth together, in 
treading the same pilgrim way. At least we could help 
each other by prayer; and now, if he is indeed treading the 
streets of the heavenly city, so high above, the world does 
seem darker. 

But, alas! he may not be in the heavenly city, but in 
some cold earthly dungeon, suffering I know not what! 

I have read the words over and over, until I have almost 
lost their meaning. He has no morbid desire to die. He 
will escape if he can, and he is daring enough to accom¬ 
plish much. And yet, if the danger were not great, he 
would not alarm Aunt Cotta with even the possibility of 
death. He always considered others so tenderly. 

He says I have helped him, him who taught and helped 
me, a poor ignorant child, so much! Yet I suppose it may 
be so. It teaches us so much to teach others. And we 
always understood each other so perfectly with so few 
words. I feel as if blindness had fallen on me when I 
think of him now. My heart gropes about in the dark and 
cannot find him. 

But then I look up, my Saviour, to thee. “To thee the 
night and the day are both alike.” I dare not think he is 
suffering; it breaks my heart. I cannot rejoice as I would 
in thinking he may be in heaven. I know not what to ask, 
but thou art with him as with me. Keep him close under 
the shadow of thy wing. There we are safe, and there we 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY 


23V 

are together. And oh, comfort Aunt Cotta! She must 
need it sorely. 

Fritz, then, like our little company at Nimptschen, loves 
the words of Dr. Luther. When I think of this I rejoice 
almost more than 1 weep for him. These truths believed 
in our hearts seem to unite us more than prison or death 
can divide. When I think of this I can sing once more 
St. Bernard’s hymn: 

SALVE CAPUT CRUENTATUM. 

Hail! tliou Head, so bruised and wounded,, 

With the crown of thorns surrounded, 

Smitten with the mocking reed, 

Wounds which may not cease to bleed 
Trickling faint and slow. 

Hail! from whose most blessed brow 
None can wipe the blood-drops now; 

All the bloom of life has fled. 

Mortal paleness there instead; 

Thou before whose presence dread 
Angels trembling bow. 

All thy vigor and thy life 
Fading in this bitter strife; 

Death his stamp on thee has set. 

Hollow and emaciate, 

Faint and drooping there. 

Thou this agony and scorn 
Hast for me a sinner borne! 

Me, unworthy, all for me! 

With those wounds of love on thee. 

Glorious Face, appear! 

Yet in this thine agony, 

Faithful Shepherd, think of me. 

From whose lips of love divine 
Sweetest draughts of life are mine. 

Purest honey flows; 

All unworthy of thy thought, 

Guilty, yet reject me not; 

Unto me thy head incline— 

Let that dying head of thine 
In my arms repose 1 

Let me true communion know 
With thee in thy sacred woe, 

Counting all beside but dross, 

Dying with thee on thy cross; 

’Neath it will I die! 


m 


THE SC HO NB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Thanks to thee with every breath 
Jesus, for thy bitter death; 

Grant thy guilty one this prayer: 
When my dying h(*ur is near, 
Gracious God, be nighl 

When my dying hour must be, 

Be not absent then from me; 

In that dreadful hour, I pray, 
Jesus, come without delay; 

See, and set me free! 

When thou biddest me depart. 
Whom I cleave to with my heart; 
Lover of my soul, be near, 

With thy saving cross appear— 
Show thyself to me! 


PART XV. 
thekla’s story. 

Wittenberg, April 2, 1521. 

Dr. Luther is gone. We all feel like a family bereaved 
of our father. 

The professors and chief burghers, with numbers of the 
students, gathered around the door of the Augustinian 
convent this morning to bid him farewell. Gottfried 
Reichenbach was near as he entered the carriage, and heard 
him say, as he turned to Melancthon, in a faltering voice, 
“ Should I not return, and should my enemies put me to 
death, oh my brother, cease not to teach and to abide 
steadfastly in the truth. Labor in my place, for I shall not 
be able to labor myself. If you be spared it matters little 
that I perish.” 

And so he drove off. And a few minutes after, we, who 
were waiting at the door, saw him pass. He did not for¬ 
get to smile at Else and her little ones, or to give a word of 
farewell to our dear blind father as he passed us. But 
there was a grave steadfastness in his countenance that 
made our hearts full of anxiety. As the usher with the 
imperial standard who preceded him, and then Dr. Luther’s 
carriage, disappeared round a corner of the street, our 



THE SCHONBEEG-COTTA FAMILY. 


239 

grandmother, whose chair had been placed at the door that 
she might see him pass, murmured, as if to herself: 

“Yes, it was with just such a look they went to the 
scaffold and the stake when I was young.” 

1 could see little, my eyes were so blinded with tears; 
and when our grandmother said this, I could bear it no 
longer, but ran up to my room, and here I have been ever 
since. My mother and Else and all of them say I have no 
control over my feelings; and I am afraid I have not. But 
it seems to me as if every one I lean my heart on were 
always taken away. First there was Eva. She always 
understood me, helped me to understand myself; did not 
laugh at my perplexities as childish, did not think my 
over-eagerness was always temper, but met my blundering 
efforts to do right. Different as she was from me (different 
as an angel from poor bewildered blundering giant Chris¬ 
topher in Else’s old legend), she always seemed to come 
down to my level and see my difficulties from where I stood, 
and so helped me over them; while every one else sees them 
from above, and wonders any one can think such trifles 
troubles at all. Not, indeed, that my dear mother and 
Esle are proud, or mean to look down on any one; but Else 
is so unselfish, her whole life is so bound up in others, that 
she does not know what more willful natures have to con¬ 
tend with. Besides, she is now out of the immediate circle 
of our everyday life at home. Then our mother is so gen¬ 
tle; she is frightened to think what sorrows life may bring 
me with the changes that must come, if little things give 
me such joy or grief now. I know she feels for me often 
more than she dares to let me see; but she is always think¬ 
ing of arming me for the trials she believes must come, by 
teaching me to be less vehement and passionate about trifles 
now. But I am afraid it is useless. I think every creature 
must suffer according to its nature; and if God has made 
our capacity for joy or sorrow deep, we cannot fill up the 
channel and say, “Henceforth I will feel so far, and no 
further.” The waters are there —soon they will recover for 
themselves the old choked-up courses; and meantime they 
will overflow. Eva also used to say, “that our armor must 
grow with our growth, and our strength with the strength 
of our conflicts; and that there is only one shield which 
does this, the shield of faith—a living, daily trust in a liv¬ 
ing, ever-present God.” 


240 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


But Eva went away. And then Nix died. I suppose if 
I saw any child now mourning over a dog as I did over Nix, 

I should wonder much as they all did at me then. But 
Nix was not only a dog to me. He was Eisenach and my 
childhood; and a whole world of love and dreams seemed 
to die for me with Nix. 

To all the rest of the world I was a little, vehement girl 
of fourteen; to Nix I was mistress, protector, everything. 
It was weeks before I could bear to come in at the front 
door, where he used to watch for me with his wistful eyes, 
and bound with cries of joy to meet me. I used to creep 
in at the garden gate. 

And then Nix’s death was the first approach of Death to 
me, and the dreadful power was no less a power because its 
shadow fell first for me on a faithful dog. I began dimly 
to feel that life, which before that seemed to be a moun¬ 
tain-path always mounting and mounting through golden 
mists to I know not what heights of beauty and joy, did 
not end on the heights, but in a dark unfathomed abyss, and 
that nowever dim its course might he, it has alas, no mists, 
or uncertainty around the nature of its close, but ends 
certainly, obviously, and universally, in death. 

I could not tell any one what I felt. I did not know 
myself. How can we understand a labyrinth until we are 
through it? I did not even know it was a labyrinth. I 
only knew that a light had passed away from everything 
and a shadow had fallen in its place. 

Then it was that Dr. Luther spoke to me of the other 
world, beyond death, which God would certainly make 
more full and beautiful than this; the world on which the 
shadow of Death can never come, because it lies in the 
eternal sunshine, on the other side of death, and all the 
shadows fall on this side. That was about the time of my 
first communion, and I saw much of Dr. Luther, and heard 
him preach. I did not say much to him, but he let down 
a light into my heart which, amid all its wanderings and 
mistakes, will, I believe, never go out. 

He made me understand something of what our dear 
heavenly Father is, and that willing but unequaled Suf¬ 
ferer—that gracious Saviour who gave himself for our sins, 
even for mine. And he made me feel that God would 
understand me better than any one, because love always 
understands, and the greatest love understands best, and 
God is love. 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


241 


Else and I spoke a little about it sometimes, but not 
much. 1 am still a child to Else and to all of them, being 
the youngest, and so much less self-controlled than I ought 
to be. Fritz understood it best; at least, I could speak to 
him more freely—I do not know why. Perhaps some hearts 
are made to answer naturally to each other, just as some of 
the furniture always vibrates when I touch a particular 
string of the lute, while nothing else in the room seems to 
feel it. Perhaps, too, sorrow deepens the heart wonder¬ 
fully, and opens a channel into the depths of all other 
hearts. And I am sure Fritz has known very deep sorrow. 
What, I do not exactly know; and I would not for the 
world try to find out. If there is a secret chamber in his 
heart, which he cannot bear to open to any one, when I 
think his thoughts are there, would I not turn aside my 
eyes and creep softly away, that he might never know I had 
found it out? 

The innermost sanctuary of his heart is, however, I 
know, not a chamber of darkness and death, but a holy 
place of daylight, for God is there. 

Hours and hours Fritz and I spoke of Dr. Luther, and 
what he had done for us both; more, perhaps for Fritz than 
even for me, because he had suffered more. It seems to 
me as if we and thousands besides in the world had been 
worshiping before an altar-picture of our Saviour, which 
we had been told was painted by a great master after a 
heavenly pattern. But all we could see was a grim, hard, 
stern countenance of one sitting on a judgment throne; in 
his hand lightnings, and worse lightnings buried in the 
cloud of his severe and threatening brow. And then, sud¬ 
denly we heard Dr. Luther’s voice behind us, saying, in his 
ringing, inspiriting tones, “Friends, what are you doing? 
That is not the right painting. These are only the boards 
which hide the master’s picture.” And so saying, he drew 
aside the terrible image on which we had been hopelessly 
gazing, vainly trying to read some traces of tenderness and 
beauty there. And all at once the real picture was revealed 
to us, the picture of the real Christ, with the look on his 
glorious face which he had on the cross, when he said of 
his murderers, “Father, forgive them; they know not 
what they do;” and to his mother, “Woman, behold thy 
son;” or to the sinful woman who washed his feet, “Go in 
pease.” 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


242 

Fritz and I also spoke very often of Eva. At least, he 
liked me to speak of her while he listened. And I never 
weary of speaking of our Eva. 

But then Fritz went away. And now it is many weeks 
since we have heard from him; and the last tidings we had 
were that little note from the convent-prison at Mainz! 

And now Dr. Luther is gone—gone to the stronghold of 
his enemies—gone, perhaps, as our grandmother says, to 
martyrdom. 

And who will keep that glorious revelation of the true, 
loving, pardoning God open for us, with a steady hand keep 
open those false shutters, now that he is withdrawn? Dr. 
Melancthon may do as well for the learned, for the theo¬ 
logians; but who will replace Dr. Luther to us, to the 
people, to working men and eager youths, and to women 
and to children? Who will make us feel as he does that 
religion is not a study, or a profession, or a system of doc¬ 
trines, but life in God; that prayer is not, as he said, an 
ascension of the heart as a spiritual exercise into some vague 
airy heights, but the lifting of the heart to God , to a heart 
which meets us, cares for us, loves us inexpressibly? Who 
will ever keep before us as he does that “ Our Father,” 
which makes all the rest of the Lord’s prayer and all pray¬ 
ers possible and helpful? No wonder that mothers held 
out their children to receive his blessing as he left us and 
then went home weeping, while even strong men brushed 
away tears from their eyes. 

It is true, Dr. Bugenhagen, who has escaped from per¬ 
secution in Pomerania, preaches fervently in his pulpit; 
and Archdeacon Carlstadt is full of fire, and Dr. Melancthon 
full of light; and many good, wise men are left. But Dr. 
Luther seemed the heart and soul of all. Others might 
say wiser things, and he might say many things others 
would be too wise to say, but it is through Dr. Luther’s 
heart that God has revealed his heart and his word to 
thousands in our country, and no one can ever be to us 
what he is. 

Day and night we pray for his safety. 


April 15. 

Christopher has returned from Erfurt, where he heard 

Dr. Luther preach. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


243 


He told us that in many places his progress was like that 
of a beloved prince through his dominions; of a prince who 
was going out to some great battle for his land. 

Peasants blessed him; poor men and women thronged 
around him and entreated him not to trust his precious life 
among his enemies. One aged priest at Nuremburg 
brought out to him a portrait of Savonarola, the good 
priest whom the pope burned at Florence not forty years 
ago. One aged widow came to him and said her parents 
had told her God would send a deliverer to break the yoke 
of Pome, and she thanked God she saw him before she died. 
At Erfurt sixty burghers and professors rode out some 
miles to escort him into the city. There, where he had 
relinquished all earthly prospects to beg bread as a monk 
through the streets, the streets were thronged with grateful 
men and women, who welcomed him as their liberator from 
falsehood and spiritual tyranny. 

Christopher heard him preach in the church of the 
Augustinian convent, where he had (as Fritz told me) 
suffered such agonies of conflict. He stood there now an 
excommunicated man, threatened with death; but he stood 
there as victor, through Christ, over the tyranny and lies 
of Satan. He seemed entirely to forget his own danger in 
the joy of the eternal salvation he came to proclaim. Not 
a word, Christopher said, about himself, or the Diet, or the 
pope’s bull, or the emperor, but all about the way a sinner 
may be saved, and a believer may be joyful. “ There are two 
kinds of works,” he said; “external works, our own works. 
These are worth little. One man builds a church; another 
makes a pilgrimage to St. Peter’s; a third fasts, puts on 
the hood, goes barefoot. All these works are nothing, and 
will perish. Now, I will tell you what is the true good 
work. God hath raised again a man , the Lord Jesus 
Christ , in order that he may crush death , destroy sin , shut 
the gates of hell. This is the work of salvation. The devil 
believed he had the Lord in his power when he beheld him 
between two thieves, suffering the most shameful martyr¬ 
dom, accursed both of heaven and man. But God put forth 
his might, and annihilated death, sin, and hell. Christ 
hath won the victory. This is the great news! And we 
are saved by his work, not by our works. The pope says 
something very different. But I tell you the holy mother 
of God herself has been saved, not by her virginity, nor by 


244 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


her maternity, nor by her purity, nor by her works, hut 
solely by means of faith, and by the work of God.” 

As he spoke the gallery in which Christopher stood listen¬ 
ing cracked. Many were greatly terrified, and even at¬ 
tempted to rush out. Dr. Luther stopped a moment, and 
then stretching out his hand said, in his clear, firm voice, 
“Fear not, there is no danger. The devil would thus 
hinder the preaching of the gospel, but he will not succeed.” 
Then returning to his text, he said, “Perhaps you will say 
to me, ‘You speak to us much about faith, teach us how 
we may obtain it.’ Yes, indeed, that is what I desire to 
teach you. Our Lord Jesus Christ has said, ‘Peace be unto 
you . Behold my hands.' And this is as if he said, ‘Oh 
man, it is I alone who have taken away thy sins, and who 
have redeemed thee, and now thou hast peace , saith the 
Lord.’” 

And he concluded: 

“ Since God has saved us, let us so order our works that 
he may take pleasure therein. Art thou rich? Let thy 
goods be serviceable to the poor. Art thou poor? Let thy 
services be of use to the rich. If thy labors are useless to 
all but thyself, the services thou pretendest to render to 
God are a mere lie.” 

Christopher left Dr. Luther at Erfurt. He said many 
tried to persuade the doctor not to venture to Worms; 
others reminded him of John Huss, burned in spite of the 
safe-conduct. And as he went, in some places the papal 
excommunication was affixed on the walls before his eyes; 
but he said, “If I perish, the truth will not.” 

And nothing moved him from his purpose. Christo¬ 
pher was most deeply touched with that sermon. He says 
the text, “Peace be unto you; and when he had so said 
Jesus showed unto them his hands and his side,” rang 
through his heart all the way home to Wittenberg, through 
the forest and the plain. The pathos of the clear, true 
voice we may never hear again writes them on his heart; 
and more than that, I trust, the deeper pathos of the voice 
which uttered a cry of agony once on the cross for us—the 
agony which won the peace. 

Yes; when Dr. Luther speaks he makes us feel we have 
to do with persons, not with things—with the devil who 
hates us, with God who loves us, with the Saviour who 
died for us. It is not holiness only and justification, or sin 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


245 


and condemnation. It is we sinning and condemned, 
Christ suffering for us, and God justifying and loving us. 
It is all I and thou. He brings us face to face with God, 
not merely sitting serene on a distant imperial throne, 
frowning in terrible majesty, or even smiling in gracious 
pity, but coming down to us close, seeking us, and caring, 
caring unutterably much, that we, even we, should be 
saved. 

I never knew, until Dr. Luther drove out of Wittenberg, 
and the car with the cloth curtains to protect him from the 
weather, which the town had provided, passed out of sight, 
and I saw the tears gently flowing down my mother’s face, 
how much she loved and honored him. 

She seems almost as anxious about him as about Fritz; 
and she did not reprove me that night when she came in 
and found me weeping by my bed. She only drew me to 
her and smoothed down my hair, and said, “ Poor little 
Thekla: God will teach us both how to have none other 
gods but himself. He will do it very tenderly ; but neither 
thy mother nor thy Saviour can teach thee this lesson with¬ 
out many a bitter tear.” 

FRITZ’S STORY. 

Ebernburg, April 2, 1526. 

A chasm has opened between me and my monastic life. 

I have been in the prison, and in the prison have I received 
at last, in full, my emancipation. The ties I dreaded im¬ 
patiently to break have been broken for me, and I am a 
monk no longer. 

I could not but speak to my brethren in the convent of 
the glad tidings which had brought me such joy. It is as 
impossible for Christian life not to diffuse itself as that liv¬ 
ing water should not flow, or that flames should not 
rise. Gradually a little band of Christ’s freedmen gathered 
around me. At first I did not speak to them much of Dr. 
Luther’s writings. My purpose was to show them that 
Luther’s doctrine was not his own, but God’s. 

But the time came when Dr. Luther’s name was on 
every lip. The bull of excommunication went forth against 
him from the Vatican. His name was branded as that of 
the vilest of heretics by every adherent of the pope. In 
many churches, especially those of the Dominicans, the 


246 


TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


people were summoned by the great bells to a solemn serv¬ 
ice of anathema, where the whole of the priests, gathered 
at the altar in the darkened building, pronounced the terri- 
ible words of doom, and then, flinging down their blazing 
torches, extinguished them on the stone pavement, as hope, 
they said, was extinguished by the anathema for the soul 
of the accursed. 

At one of these services I was accidentally present. And 
mine was not the only heart which glowed with burning 
indignation ta hear that worthy name linked with those of 
apostates and heretics,and held up to universal execration. 
But, perhaps, in no heart there did it enkindle such a fire 
as in mine. Because I knew the source from which those 
curses came, how lightly, how carelessly those fire-brands 
were flung; not fiercely, by the fanaticism of blinded con¬ 
sciences, but daintily and deliberately, by cruel, reckless 
hands, as a matter of diplomacy and policy, by those who 
cared themselves neither for God’s curse nor his blessing. 
And I knew also the heart which they were meant to 
wound; how loyal, how tender, how true; how slowly, and 
with what pain Dr. Luther had learned to believe the idols 
of his youth a lie; with what a wrench, when the choice at 
last had to be made between the word of God and the voice 
of the church, he had clung to the Bible, and let the hopes, 
and trust, and friendships of earlier days be torn from him; 
what anguish that separation still cost him; how willingly, 
as a humble little child, at the sacrifice of anything but 
truth and human souls, he would have flung himself again 
on the bosom of that church to whom, in his fervent 
youth, he had offered up all that makes life dear. 

“ They curse , hut hless Thou.” 

The words came unbidden into my heart, and almost 
unconsciously from my lips. Around me I heard more 
than one “Amen;” but at the same time I became aware 
that I was watched by malignant eyes. 

After the publication of the excommunication, they 
publicly burned the writings of Dr. Luther in the great 
square. Mainz was the first city in Germany where this 
indignity was offered him. 

Mournfully I returned to my convent. In the cloisters 
of our order the opinions concerning Luther are much 
divided. The writings of St. Augustine have kept the 
truth alive in many hearts among us; and besides this, 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


247 


there is the natural bias to one of our own name,and the party 
opposition to the Dominicans, Tetzel and Eck, Dr. Luther’s 
enemies. Probably there are few Augustinian convents in 
which there are not two opposite parties in reference to Dr. 
Luther. 

In speaking of the great truths, of God freely justifying 
the sinner because Christ died (the Judge acquitting 
because the Judge himself had suffered for the guilty), 
I had endeavored to trace them, as I have said, beyond 
all human words to their divine authority. But now, to 
confess Luther seemed to me to have become identical with 
confessing Christ. It is the truth which is assailed in any 
age which tests our fidelity. It is to confess we are called, 
not merely to profess. If I profess, with the loudest 
voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the 
truth of God except precisely that little point which the 
world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am 
not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing 
Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the 
soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield 
besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at 
that one point. 

It seems to me also that, practically, the contest in every 
age of conflict ranges usually round the person of one 
faithful, God-sent man, whom to follow loyally is fidelity 
to God. In the days of the first Judaizing assault on the 
early church, that man was St. Paul. In the great Arian 
battle, this man was Athanasius —“Athanasius contra 
mundum .” In our days, in our land, I believe it is Luther; 
and to deny Luther would be for me, who learned the truth 
from his lips, to deny Christ. Luther, I believe, is the 
man whom God has given to his church in Germany in this 
age. Luther, therefore, I will follow—not as a perfect ex¬ 
ample, but as a God-appointed leader. Men can never be 
neutral in great religious contests; and if, because of the 
little wrong in the right cause, or the little evil in the good 
man, we refuse to take the side of right, we are, by that 
very act, silently taking the side of wrong. 

When I came back to the convent I found the storm 
gathering. I was asked if I possessed any of Dr. Luther’s 
writings. I confessed that I did. It was demanded that 
they should be given up. I said they could be taken from 
me, but I would not willingly give them up to destruction. 


248 


THE SCH0NBE11Q-C0TTA FAMILY. 


because I believed they contained the truth of God. Thus 
the matter ended until we had each retired to our cells for 
the night, when one of the older monks came to me and 
accused me of secretly spreading Lutheran heresy among 
the brethren. 

I acknowledged I had diligently, but not secretly, done 
all I could to spread among the brethren the truths con¬ 
tained in Dr. Luther’s books, although not in his words, 
but in St. Paul’s. A warm debate ensued, which ended in 
the monk angrily leaving the cell, saying that means would 
be found to prevent the further diffusion of this poison. 

The next day I was taken into the prison where John of 
Wesel died; the heavy bolts were drawn upon me, and I 
was left in solitude. 

As they left, the monk with whom I had the discussion 
of the previous night said, “In this chamber, not forty 
years since, a heretic such as Martin Luther died.” 

The words were intended to produce wholesome fear: 
they acted as a bracing tonic. The spirit of the conqueror 
who had seemed to be defeated there, but now stood with 
the victorious palm before the Lamb, seemed near me. 
The Spirit of the truth for which he suffered was with me; 
and in the solitude of that prison I learned lessons years 
might not have taught me elsewhere. 

No one except those who have borne them know how 
strong are the fetters which bind us to a false faith, learned 
at our mother’s knee, and riveted on us by the sacrifices 
of years. Perhaps I should never have been able to break 
them. For me, as for thousands of others, they were 
rudely broken by hostile hands. But the blows were the 
accolade which smote me from a monk into a knight and 
soldier of my Lord. 

Yes; there I learned that these vows which have bound 
me for so many years are bonds, not to God, but to a lying 
tyranny. The only true vows, as Dr. Luther says, are the 
vows of our baptism—to renounce the world, the flesh, and 
the devil, as soldiers of Christ. The only divine order is 
the common order of Christianity. All other orders are 
disorder; not confederations within the church, but con¬ 
spiracies against it. If, in an army, the troops chose to 
abandon the commander’s arrangement, and range them¬ 
selves, by arbitrary rules, in peculiar uniforms, around self- 
elected leaders, they would not be soldiers—they would be 
mutineers. 


THE SCRONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


249 


God’s order is, I think, the state to embrace all men, the 
church to embrace all Christian men; and the kernel of 
the state and the type of the church is the family. 

He creates us to be infants, children—sons, daughters— 
husband, wife—father, mother. He says, Obey your par¬ 
ents, love, your wife, reverence your husband, love your 
children. 

As children, let the Lord at Nazareth be your model; as 
married, let the Lord, who loved the church better than 
life, be your type: as parents, let the heavenly Father be 
your guide. And if we, abandoning every holy name of 
family love he has sanctioned, and every lowly duty he has 
enjoined, choose to band ourselves anew into isolated con¬ 
glomerations of men or women, connected only by a com¬ 
mon name and dress, we are not only amiable enthusiasts— 
we are rebels against the divine order of humanity. 

God, indeed, may call some especially to forsake father 
and mother, and wife and children, and all things for his 
dearer love. But when he calls to such destinies, it is by 
the plain voice of Providence, or by the bitter call of perse¬ 
cution; and then the martyr’s or the apostle’s solitary path 
is as much the lowly, simple path of obedience as the 
mother’s or the child’s. The crown of the martyr is con¬ 
secrated by the same holy oil which anoints the head of the 
bride, the mother, or the child—the consecration of love 
and of obedience. There is none other. All that is not 
duty is sin; all that is not obedience is disobedience; all 
that is not of love is of seif; and self crowned with thorns 
in a cloister is as selfish as self crowned with ivy at a revel. 

Therefore I abandon cowl and cloister forever. I am no 
more Brother Sebastian, of the order of the Eremites of St. 
Augustine. I am Friedrich Cotta, Margaret Cotta’s son, 
Else and Thekla’s brother Fritz. I am no more a monk. 
I am a Christian. I am no more a vowed Augustinian. I 
am a baptized Christian, dedicated to Christ from the arms 
of my mother, united to him by the faith of my manhood. 
Henceforth I will order my life by no routine of ordinances 
imposed by the will of a dead man hundreds of years since. 
But day by day I will seek to yield myself, body, soul, and 
spirit, to the living will of my almighty loving God, saying to 
him morning by morning, “Give me this day my daily 
bread. Appoint to me this day my daily task.” And he 
will never fail to hear, however often I may fail to ask. 


250 


THE SGHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


I had abundance of time for those thoughts in my prison; 
for during the three weeks I lay there I had, with the ex¬ 
ception of the bread and water which were silently laid 
inside the door every morning, but two visits. And these 
were from my friend the aged monk who had first told me 
about John of Wesel. 

The first time he came (he said) to persuade me to 
recant. But whatever he intended, he said little about 
recantation—much more about his own weakness, which 
hindered him from confessing the same truth. 

The second time he brought me a disguise, and told m@ 
he had provided the means for my escape that very night. 
When, therefore, I heard the echoes of the heavy bolts of 
the great doors die away through the long stone corridors, 
and listened till the last tramp of feet ceased, and door 
after door of the various cells was closed, and every sound 
was still throughout the building, I laid aside my monk’s 
cowl and frock and put on the burgher dress provided for 
me. 

To me it was a glad and solemn ceremony, and, alone in 
ray prison, I prostrated myself on the stone floor, and 
thanked Him who, by his redeeming death and the eman¬ 
cipating word of his free Spirit, had made me a freeman, 
nay, infinitely better, his freedman. 

The bodily freedom to which I looked forward was to me 
a light boon indeed in comparison with the liberty of heart 
already mine. The putting on this common garb of secular 
life was to me like a solemn investiture with the freedom of 
the city and the empire of God. Henceforth I was not to 
be a member of a narrow, separated class, but of the com¬ 
mon family; no more to freeze alone on a height, but to tread 
the lowly path of common duty; to help my brethren, not 
as men at a sumptuous table throw crumbs to beggars and 
dogs, but to live among them—to share my bread of life 
with them; no longer as the forerunner in the wilderness, 
but, like the Master, in the streets, and highways, and 
homes of men; assuming no nobler name than man created 
in the image of God, born in the image of Adam; aiming 
at no loftier title than Christian, redeemed by the blood of 
Christ, and created anew, to be conformed to his glorious 
image. Yes, as the symbol of a freedman, as the uniform 
of a soldier, as the armor of a sworn knight, at once free¬ 
man and servant, was that lowly burgher’s dress to me; 


THE 8CH0NBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


*51 


and with a joyful heart, when the aged monk came to me 
again, I stepped after him, leaving my monk’s frock lying 
in the corner of the cell, like the husk of that old lifeless 
life. 

In vain did I endeavor to persuade my liberator to ac¬ 
company me in my flight. “ The world would be a prison 
to me, brother,” he said with a sad smile. “ All I loved in 
it are dead; and what would I do there, with the body of 
an old man and the helpless inexperience of a child? Fear 
not for me,” he added; “I also shall, I trust, one day dwell 
in a home, but not on earth.” 

And so we parted, he returning to the convent, and I 
taking my way, by river and forest, to this castle of the 
noble knight Franz von Sickingen, on a steep height at the 
angle formed by the junction of two rivers. 

My silent weeks of imprisonment had been weeks of busy 
life in the world outside. When I reached this castle of 
Ebernburg, I found the whole of its inhabitants in a fer¬ 
ment about the summoning of Dr. Luther to Worms. His 
name, and my recent imprisonment for his faith, were a 
sufficient passport to the hospitality of the castle, and I was 
welcomed most cordially. 

It was a great contrast to the monotonous routine of the 
convent and the stillness of the prison. All was life and 
stir; eager debates as to what it would be best to do for Dr. 
Luther; incessant coming and going of messengers on 
horse and foot between Ebernburg and Worms, where the 
Diet is already sitting, and where the good knight Franz 
spends much of his time in attendance on the emperor. 

Ulrich von Hutten is also here, from time to time, vehe¬ 
ment in his condemnation of the fanaticism of monks and 
the lukewarmness of princes; and Dr. Bucer, a disciple of 
Dr. Luther’s, set free from the bondage of Borne by his 
healthful words at the great conference of the Augustinians 
at Heidelberg. 


April 30, 1521. 

The events of an age seem to have been crowded into 
the last month. A few days after I wrote last, it was de¬ 
cided to send a deputation to Dr. Luther, who was then 
rapidly approaching Worms, entreating him not to venture 
into the city, but to turn aside to Ebernburg. The em¬ 
peror’s confessor, Glapio, had persuaded the knight von 


252 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Sickingen and the chaplain Bncer that all might easily be 
arranged, if Dr. Luther only avoided the fatal step of 
appearing at the Diet. 

A deputation of horsemen was therefore sent to intercept 
the doctor on his way, and to conduct him, if he would 
consent, to Ebernburg, the “ refuge and liostlery of right¬ 
eousness,” as it has been termed. 

I accompanied the little band, of which Dr. Bucer was 
to be chief spokesman. I did not think Dr. Luther would 
come. Unlike the rest of the party, I had known him not 
only when he stepped on the great stage of the world as the 
antagonist of falsehood, but as the simple, straightforward, 
obscure monk. And I knew that the step which to others 
seemed so great, leading him from safe obscurity into 
perilous pre-eminence before the eyes of all Christendom, 
was to him no great momentary effort, but simply one little 
step in the path of obedience and lowly duty which he had 
been endeavoring to tread so many years. But I feared. 
I distrusted Glapio, and believed that all this earnestness 
on the part of the papal party to turn the doctor aside was 
not for his sake, but for their own. 

I needed not, at least, have distrusted Dr. Luther. Bucer 
entreated him with the eloquence of affectionate solicitude; 
his faithful friends and fellow-travelers, Jonas, Amsdorf, 
and Schurff, wavered, but Dr. Luther did not hesitate an 
instant. He was in the path of obedience. The next step 
was as unquestionable and essential as all the rest, although, 
as he had once said, “it led through flames which extended 
from Worms to Wittenberg, and raged up to heaven.” He 
did not, however, use any of these forcible illustrations 
now, natural as they were to him. He simply said: 

“I continue my journey. If the emperor’s confessor has 
anything to say to me, he can say it at Worms. I will go 
to the place to tuhich I have been summoned .” 

And he went on, leaving the friendly deputation to re¬ 
turn baffled to Ebernburg. 

I did not leave him. As we went on the way, some of 
those who had accompanied him told me through what fer¬ 
vent greetings and against what vain entreaties of tearful 
affection he had pursued his way thus far; how many had 
warned him that he was going to the stake, and had wept 
that they should see his face no more; how through much 
bodily weakness and suffering, through acclamations and 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


253 


tears, he had passed on simply and steadfastly, blessing lit¬ 
tle children in the schools he visited, and telling them to 
search the Scriptures; comforting the timid and aged, 
stirring np the hearts of all to faith and prayer, and by his 
courage and trust more than once turning enemies into 
friends. 

“Are you the man who is to overturn the popedom?” 
said a soldier, accosting him rather contemptuously at a 
halting-place; “how will you accomplish that?” 

“I rely on Almighty God,” he replied, “whose orders 
I have.” 

And the soldier replied reverently: 

“I serve the Emperor Charles; your Master is greater 
than mine.” 

One more assault awaited Dr. Luther before he reached 
his destination. It came through friendly lips. When he 
arrived near Worms, a messenger came riding rapidly 
toward us from his faithful friend Spalatin, the elector’s 
chaplain, and implored him on no account to think of 
entering the city. 

The doctor’s old fervor of expression returned at such a 
temptation meeting him so near the goal 

“Go tell your master,” he said, “that if there were at 
Worms as many devils as there are tiles on the roofs, yet 
would I go in.” / 

And he went in. A hundred cavaliers met him near the 
gates, and escorted nim within the city. Two thousand 
people were eagerly waiting him, and pressed to see him as 
he passed through the streets. Not all friends. Fanatical 
Spaniards were among them, who had torn his books in 
pieces from the book-stalls, and crossed themselves when 
they looked at him, as if he had been the devil; baffled 
partisans of the pope: and on the other hand, timid Chris¬ 
tians who hoped all from his courage; men who had waited 
long for this deliverance, had received life from his words, 
and had kept his portrait in their homes and hearts encir¬ 
cled like that of a canonized saint with a glory. And 
through the crowd he passed, the only man, perhaps, in it 
who did not see Dr. Luther through a mist of hatred or 
of glory, but felt himself a solitary, feeble, helpless man, 
leaning only, yet resting securely, on the arm of Almighty 
strength. 

Those who knew him best perhaps wondered at him most 


254 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


during those days which followed. Not at his courage— 
that we had expected—but at his calmness and moderation. 
It was this which seemed to me most surely the seal of God 
on that fervent, impetuous nature, stamping the work and 
the man as of God. 

We none of us knew how he would have answered before 
that august assembly. At his first appearance some of us 
feared he might have been too vehement. The Elector 
Frederic could not have been more moderate and calm. 
When asked whether he would retract his books, I think 
there were few among us who were not surprised at the 
noble self-restraint of his reply. He asked for time. 

“Most gracious emperor, gracious princes and lords,” he 
said, “with regard to the first accusation, I acknowledge 
the books enumerated to have been from me. I cannot dis¬ 
own them. As regards the second, seeing that it is a ques¬ 
tion of the faith and the salvation of souls, and of God’s 
word, the most precious treasure in heaven or earth, I 
should act rashly were I to reply hastily. I might affirm 
less than the case requires, or more than truth demands, 
and thus offend against that word of Christ, ‘Whosoever 
shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my 
Father who is in heaven.’ Wherefore I beseech your im¬ 
perial majesty, with all submission, to allow me time that 
I may reply without doing prejudice to the word of God.” 

He could afford to be thought for the time what many of 
his enemies tauntingly declared him, a coward, brave in the 
cell, but appalled when he came to face the world. 

During the rest of that day he was full of joy; “like a 
child,” said some, “who knows not what is before him;” 
“like a veteran,” said others, “who has prepared every¬ 
thing for the battle;” like both, I thought, since the 
strength of the veteran in the battles of God is the strength 
of the child following his Father’s eye, and trusting on 
his Father’s arm. 

A conflict awaited him afterward in the course of the 
night which one of us witnessed, and which made him who 
witnessed it feel no wonder that the imperial presence had 
no terrors for Luther on the morrow. 

Alone that night our leader fought the fight to which all 
other combats were but as a holiday tournament. Pros¬ 
trate on the ground, with sobs and bitter tears, he prayed: 

“Almighty, everlasting God, how terrible this world is! 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


255 


How it would open its jaws to devour me, and how weak 
is my trust in thee! The flesh is weak, and the devil is 
strong! Oh thou, my God, help me against all the wisdom 
of this world. Do thou the work. It is for thee alone to 
do it; for the work is thine, not mine. I have nothing 
to bring me here. I have no controversy to maintain, not 
I, with the great ones of the earth. I too would that my 
days should glide along happy and calmly. But the cause 
is thine. It is righteous, it is eternal. Oh Lord, help 
me; thou that art faithful, thou that art unchangeable. 
It is not in any man I trust. That were vain indeed. All 
that is in man gives way; all that comes from man faileth. 
Oh God, my God, dost thou not hear me? Art thou dead? 
No; thou canst not die. Thou art but hiding thyself. 
Thou hast chosen me for this work. I know it. Oh, 
then, arise and work. Be thou on my side, for the sake of 
thy beloved Son Jesus Christ, who is my defense, my 
shield, and my fortress. 

“Oh Lord, my God, where art thou? Come, come; I 
am ready—ready to forsake life for thy truth, patient as a 
lamb. For it is a righteous cause, and it is thine own. I 
will not depart from thee, now nor through eternity. And 
although the world should be full of demons; although my 
body, which, nevertheless, is the work of thine hands, 
should be doomed to bite the dust, to be stretched upon the 
rack, cut into pieces, consumed to ashes, the soul is thine. 
Yes; for this I have the assurance of thy word. My soul 
is thine. It will abide near thee throughout the endless 
ages. Amen. Oh God, help thou me! Amen.” 

Ah, how little those who follow know the agony it costs 
to take the first step, to venture on the perilous ground no 
human soul around has tried. 

Insignificant indeed the terrors of the empire to one 
who had seen the terrors of the Almighty. Petty indeed 
are the assaults of flesh and blood to him who has withstood 
principalities and powers, and the hosts of the angel of 
darkness. 

At four o’clock the marshal of the empire came to lead 
him to his trial. But his real hour of trial was over, and 
calm and joyful Dr. Luther passed through the crowded 
streets to the imperial presence. 

As he drew near the door, the veteran General Freunds- 
berg, touching his shoulder, said: 


256 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“Little monk, yon have before yon an enconnter snch as 
neither I nor any other captains have seen the like of even 
in onr bloodiest campaigns. But if your cause be just and 
if you know it to be so, go forward in the name of God, 
and fear nothing. God will not forsake you.” 

Friendly heart! he knew not that our Martin Luther 
was coming from his battlefield, and was simply going as 
a conqueror to declare before men the victory he had won 
from mightier foes. 

And so at last he stood, the monk, the peasant’s son, be¬ 
fore all the princes of the empire, the kingliest heart among 
them all, crowned with a majesty which was incorruptible, 
because invisible to worldly eyes; one against thousands 
who were bent on his destruction; one in front of thou¬ 
sands who leaned on his fidelity; erect because he rested on 
that unseen arm above. 

The words he spoke that day are ringing through all 
Germany. The closing sentence will never be forgotten— 

“Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. 
Amen.” 

To him these deeds of heroism are acts of simple obedi¬ 
ence; every step inevitable, because every step is duty. In 
this path he leans on God’s help absolutely and only. 

And all faithful hearts throughout the land respond to 
his Amen. 

On the other hand, many of the polished courtiers and 
subtle Roman diplomatists saw no eloquence in his words, 
words which stirred every true heart to its depths. “That 
man,” said they, “will never convince us.” How should 
he? His arguments were not in their language, nor ad¬ 
dressed to them, but to true'and honest hearts; and to such 
they spoke. 

To men with whom eloquence means elaborate fancies, 
decorating corruption or veiling emptiness, what could St. 
Paul seem but a “babbler?” 

All men of earnest purpose acknowledged their force— 
enemies, by indignant clamor that he should be silenced; 
friends, by wondering gratitude to God, who had stood by 
him. 

It was nearly dark when the Diet broke up. As Dr. 
Luther came out, escorted by the imperial officers, a panic 
spread through the crowd collected in the street, and from 
lip to lip was heard the cry: 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


257 


“They are taking him to prison.” 

“ They are leading me to my hotel,” said the calm voice 
of him whom this day has made the great man of Germany. 
And the tumult subsided. 


Ebernburg, June, 1521. 

Dr. Luther has disappeared! Not one t*hat I have seen 
knows at this moment where they have taken him, whether 
he is in the hands of friend or foe, whether even he is still 
om earth! 

r\Ye ought to have heard of his arrival at Wittenberg 
many days since. But no inquiries can trace him beyond 
the village of Mora in the Thuringian Forest. There he 
went from Eisenach on his way back to Wittenberg, to visit 
his aged grandmother and some of his father’s relations, 
peasant-farmers who live on the clearings of the forest. 
In his grandmother’s lowly home he passed the night, and 
took leave of her the next morning, and no one has heard 
of him since J 

We are not without hope that he is in the hands of 
friends; yet fears will mingle with these hopes. His 
enemies are so mauy and so bitter, no means would seem, 
to many of them, unworthy to rid the world of such a 
heretic. 

While he yet remained at Worms the Romans strenuously 
insisted that his obstinacy had made the safe-conduct in¬ 
valid; some even of the German princes urged that he 
should be seized; and it was only by the urgent remon¬ 
strances of others, who protested that they would never 
suffer such a blot on German honor, that he was saved. 

At the same time, the most insidious efforts were' made 
to persuade him to retract, or to resign his safe-conduct, in 
order to show his willingness to abide by the issue of a fair 
discussion. This last effort, appealing to Dr. Luther’s 
confidence in the truth for which he was ready to die, had 
all but prevailed with him. But a knight who was present 
when it was made, seeing through the treachery, fiercely 
ejected the priest who proposed it from the house. 

Yet through all assaults, insidious or open, Dr. Luther 
remained calm and unmoved, moved by no threats, ready 
to listen to any fair proposition. 

Among all the polished courtiers and proud princes and 
prelates, he seemed to me to stand like an ambassador from 


258 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


an imperial court among the petty dignitaries of some 
petty province. His manners had the dignity of one who 
has been accustomed to a higher presence than any around 
him, giving to every one the honor due to him, indifferent 
to all personal slights, but inflexible on every point that 
concerned the honor of his sovereign. 

Those of us who had known him in earlier days saw in 
him all the simplicity, the deep earnestness, the childlike 
delight in simple pleasures we had known in him of old. 
It was our old friend Martin Luther, but it seemed as if 
our Luther had come back to us from a residence in heaven, 
such a peace and majesty dwelt in all he said. One 
incident especially struck me. When the glass he was 
about to drink of at the feast given by the archbishop of 
Treves, one of the papal party, shivered in his hand as he 
signed the cross over it, and his friends exclaimed “ poison 1” 
he (so ready usually to see spiritual agency in all things) 
quietly observed that the “ glass had doubtless broken on ac¬ 
count of its having been plunged too soon into cold water 
when it was washed.” 

His courage was no effort of a strong nature. He simply 
trusted in God, and really was afraid of nothing. 

And now he is gone. 

Whether among friends or foes, in a hospitable refuge 
such as this, or in a hopeless secret dungeon, to us for the 
time at least he is dead. No word of sympathy or counsel 
passes between us. The voice to which all Germany hushed 
its breath to listen is silenced. 

Under the excommunication of the pope, under the ban 
of the empire, branded as a heretic, sentenced as a traitor, 
reviled by the emperor’s own edict as “a fool, a blasphemer, 
a devil clothed in a monk’s cowl,” it is made treason to 
give him food or shelter, and a virtue to deliver him to 
death. And to all this, if he is living, he can utter no 
word of reply. 

Meantime, on the other hand, every word of his is treas¬ 
ured up and clothed with the sacred pathos of the dying 
words of a father. The noble letter which he wrote to the 
nobles describing his appearance before the Diet is treasured 
in every home. 

Yet some among us derive not a little hope from the last 
letter he wrote, which was to Lucas Cranach, from Frank¬ 
fort. In it he says: 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


259 

“The Jews may sing once more their ‘Io! Io!’ but to us 
also the Easter-day will come, and then will we sing 
Alleuiah. A little while we must be silent and suffer. 
‘A little while,’ said Christ, ‘and ye shall not see me; and 
again a little while and ye shall see me.’ I hope it may be 
so now. But the will of God, the best in all things, be 
done in this as in heaven and earth. Amen.” 

Many of us think this is a dim hint to those who love 
him that he knew what was before him, and that after a 
brief concealment for safety, “till this tyranny be over 
past,” he will be among us once more. 

I, at least, think so, and pray that to him this time of 
silence may be a time of close intercourse with God, from 
which he may come forth refreshed and strengthened to 
guide and help us all. 

And meantime, a work, not without peril, but full of 
sacred joy, opens before me. I have been supplied by the 
friends of Dr. Luther’s doctrine with copies of his books 
and pamphlets, both in Latin and German, which I am to 
sell as a hawker through the length and breadth of Ger¬ 
many, and in any other lands I can penetrate. 

I am to start to-morrow, and to me my pack and strap 
are burdens more glorious than the armor of a prince of the 
empire; my humble peddler’s coat and staff are vestments 
more sacred than the robes of a cardinal or the wands of 
a pilgrim. 

For am I not a pilgrim to the city which hath founda¬ 
tions? Is not my yoke the yoke of Christ? and am I not 
distributing, among thirsty and enslaved men, the water of 
life and the truth which sets the heart free? 


PART XVI. 
fritz’s story. 

Black Forest, May, 1521. 

The first week of my wandering life is over. To-day 
my way lay through the solitary paths of the Black Forest, 
which, eleven years ago, I trod with Dr. Martin Luther, on 
our pilgrimage to Rome. Both of us then wore the monk’s 
frock and cowl. Both were devoted subjects of the pope, 



260 


THE 8GH0NBER0-C0TTA FAMILY . 


and would have deprecated, as the lowest depth of degra¬ 
dation, his anathema. Yet at that very time Martin Luther 
bore in his heart the living germ of all that is now agitating 
men’s hearts from Pomerania to Spain. He was already a 
freedman of Christ, and he knew it. The holy Scriptures 
were already to him the one living fountain of truth. 
Believing simply in Him who died, the just for the unjust, 
he had received the free pardon of his sins. Prayer was to 
him the confiding petition of a forgiven child received to 
the heart of the Father, and walking humbly by his side. 
Christ he knew already as the confessor and priest; the 
holy Spirit as the personal teacher through his own word. 

The fetters of the old ceremonial were indeed still around 
him, but only as the brown casings still swathe many of 
the swelling buds of the young leaves; while others this 
May morning, crackled and burst as I passed along in the 
silence through the green forest paths. The moment of 
liberation, to the passer-by, always seems a great, sudden 
effort; but those who have watched the slow swelling of the 
imprisoned bud, know that the last expansion of life which 
bursts the scaly cerements is but one moment of the imper¬ 
ceptible but incessant growth, of which even the apparent 
death of winter was a stage. 

But it is good to live in the spring-time; and as I went 
on, my heart sang with the birds and the leaf-buds, “ For 
me also the cerements of winter are burst—for me and for 
all the land!” 

And as I walked, I sang aloud the old Easter hymn 
which Eva used to love: 


Pone luctum, Magdalena, 

Et serena laclirymas; 

Non est jam sermonis ccena. 
Non cur fletum exprimas; 
Causae mille sunt laetandi. 
Causae mille exultandi, 

Alleluia resonet! 

Suma risum, Magdalena, 
Frons nitescat lucida; 
Denigravit omnis poena. 

Lux corsucat fulgida; 
Cliristus nondum liberavit, 
Et de morte triumpliavit: 
Alleluia resonetl 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY, 


261 


Gaude, plaude Magdalena, 

Tumba Christus exiit; 

Tristis est peracta scena, 

Victor mortis rediit; 

Quern defiebis morientem. 

Nunc arride resurgentem; 

Alleluia resonet! 

Tolle vultum, Magdalena, 

Redivivum obstupe; 

Vide frons quam sit amoena, 

Quinque plagas adspice; 

Fulgent sicut margaritae, 

Ornamenta novae vitae; 

Alleluia resonet! 

Vive, vive, Magdalena! 

Tua lux reversa est; 

Gaudiis turgescit vena. 

Mortis vis obstersa est; 

Maesti procul sunt dolores, 

Laeti redeant amores; 

Alleluia resonet! 

Yes, even in the old dark times, heart after heart, in 
quiet homes and secret convent cells, has doubtless learned 
this hidden joy. But now the world seems learning it. 
The winter lias its robins, with their solitary warblings; 
but now the spring is here, the songs come in choruses, and 
thank God I am awake to listen! 

But the voice which awoke this music first in my heart, 
among these very forests—and since then, through the 
grace of God, in countless hearts throughout this and all 
lands—what silence hushes it now? The silence of the 
grave, or only of some friendly refuge? In either case, 
doubtless, it is not silent to God. 

I had scarcely finished my hymn, when the trees became 
more scattered and smaller, as if they had been cleared not 
long since; and I found myself on the edge of a valley, on 
the slopes of which nestled a small village, with its spire 
and belfry rising among the wooden cottages, and flocks of 
sheep and goats grazing in the pastures beside the little 
stream which watered it. 

I lifted up my heart to God, that some hearts in that 
peaceful place might welcome the message of eternal peace 
through the books I carried. 

As I entered the village, the priest came out of the 
parsonage—and courteously saluted me. 


262 


THE SCHONBEHG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


I offered to show him my wares. 

“It is not likely there will be anything there for me,” he 
said, smiling. “My days are over for ballads and stories 
snch as I suppose your merchandise consists of.” 

But when he saw the name of Luther on the title page 
of a volume which I showed him, his face changed, and he 
said in a grave voice, “Do you know what you carry?” 

“I trust I do,” I replied. “I carry most of these books 
in my heart as well as on my shoulders.” 

“But do you know the danger?” the old man continued. 
“We have heard that Dr. Luther has been excommuni¬ 
cated by the pope, and laid under the ban of the empire; 
and only last week, a traveling merchant, such as yourself, 
told us that his body had been seen, pierced through with 
a hundred wounds.” 

“ That was not true three days since,” I said. “At least, 
his best friends at Worms knew nothing of it.” 

“Thank God!” he said; “for in this village we owe that 
good man much. And if,” he added timidly, “he has in¬ 
deed fallen into heresy, it would be well he had time to 
repent.” 

In that village I sold many of my books, and left others 
with the good priest, who entertained me most hospitably, 
and sent me on my way with a tearful farewell, compounded 
of blessings, warnings, and prayers. 


Paris, July, 1521. 

I have crossed the French frontier, and have been stay¬ 
ing some days in this great, gay, learned city. 

In Germany, my books procured me more of welcome 
than of opposition. In some cases, even where the local 
authorities deemed it their duty publicly to protest against 
them, they themselves secretly assisted in their distribution. 
In others, the eagerness to purchase, and to glean any frag¬ 
ment of information about Luther, drew a crowd around 
me, who, after satisfying themselves that I had no news to 
give them of his present state, lingered as long as I would 
speak, to listen to my narrative of his appearance before the 
emperor at Worms, while murmurs of enthusiastic approval, 
and often sobs and tears, testified the sympathy of the peo¬ 
ple with him. In the towns, many more copies of his 
“Letter to the German Nobles” were demanded than I 
could supply. 


TEE SGEONBEUG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


263 


But what touched me most was to see the love and 
almost idolatrous reverence which had gathered around his 
name in remote districts, among the oppressed and toiling 
peasantry. 

I remember especially, in one village, a fine-looking old 
peasant farmer taking me to an inner room where hung a 
portrait of Luther, encircled with a glory, with a -curtain 
before it. 

“See!” he said. “The lord of that castle” (and he 
pointed to a fortress on an opposite height) “ has wrought 
me and mine many a wrong. Two of my sons have per¬ 
ished in his selfish feuds, and his huntsmen lay waste my 
fields as they choose in the chase; yet, if I shoot a deer, I 
may be thrown into the castle dungeon, as mine have been 
before. But their reign is nearly over now. I saw that 
man at Worms. I heard him speak, bold as a lion, for 
the truth, before emperor, princes, and prelates. God has 
sent us the deliverer; and the reign of righteousness will 
come at last, when every man shall have his due.” 

“Friend,” I said, with an aching heart, “the Deliverer 
came fifteen hundred years ago, but the reign of justice has 
not come to the world yet. The Deliverer was crucified, 
and his followers since then have suffered, not reigned.” 

“God is patient,” he said, “and we have been patient 
long, God knows; but I trust the time is come at last.” 

“But the redemption Dr. Luther proclaims,” I said, 
gently, “is liberty from a worse bondage than that of the 
nobles, and it is a liberty no tyrant, no dungeon, can de¬ 
prive us of—the liberty of the sons of God;” and he lis¬ 
tened earnestly while I spoke to him of justification, and 
the suffering, redeeming Lord. But at the end he said: 

“Yes, that is good news. But I trust Dr. Luther will 
avenge many a wrong among us yet. They say he was a 
peasant’s son like me.” 

If I were Dr. Luther, and knew that the wistful eyes of 
the oppressed and sorrowful throughout the land were 
turned to me, I should be tempted to say: 

“ Lord, let me die before these oppressed and burdened 
hearts learn how little I can help them!” 

For verily there is much evil done under the sun. Yet 
as truly there is healing for every disease, remedy for 
every wrong, and rest from every burden, in the tidings 
Dr. Luther brings; but remedy of a different kind, I fear, 
from what too many fondly expect. 


264 


THE 8CHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


It is strange, also, to see how, in these few weeks, the 
wildest tales have sprung up and spread in all directions 
about Dr. Luther’s disappearance. Some say he has been 
secretly murdered, and that his wounded corpse has been 
seen; others, that he was borne away bleeding through the 
forest to some dreadful doom; while others boldly assert 
that he will reappear at the head of a band of liberators, 
who will go through the length and breadth of the land, 
redressing every wrong, and punishing every wrong-doer. 

Truly, if a few weeks can throw such a haze around 
facts, what would a century without a written record have 
done for Christianity; or what would that record itself 
have been without inspiration? 

The country was in some parts very disturbed. In 
Alsace I came on a secret meeting of the peasants, who 
have bound themselves with the most terrible oaths to wage 
war to the death against the nobles. 

More than once I was stopped by a troop of horsemen 
near a castle, and my wares searched, to see if they belonged 
to the merchants of some city with whom the knight of the 
castle was at feud; and on one of these occasions it might 
have fared ill with me if a troop of Landsknechts in the 
service of the empire had not appeared in time to rescue 
me and my companions. 

Yet everywhere the name of Luther was of equal inter¬ 
est. The peasants believed he would rescue them from the 
tyranny of the nobles; and many of the knights spoke of 
him as the assertor of German liberties against a foreign 
yoke. More than one poor parish priest welcomed him as 
the deliverer from the avarice of the great abbeys or the 
prelates. Thus, in farmhouse and hut, in castle and 
parsonage, I and my books found many a cordial welcome. 
And all I could do was to sell the books, and tell all who 
would listen, that the yoke Luther’s words were powerful 
to break was the yoke of the devil, the prince of all oppres¬ 
sors, and that the freedom he came to republish was free¬ 
dom from the tyranny of sin and self. 

My true welcome, however, the one which rejoiced my 
heart, was when any said, as many did, on sick beds, in 
lowly and noble homes, and in monasteries: 

“Thank God, these words are in our hearts already. 
They have taught us the way to God; they have brought 
us peace and freedom.” 


THE SCRONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


265 


Or when others said: 

“ I must have that book. This one and that one that I 
know is another man since he read Dr. Luther’s words.” 

But if I was scarcely prepared for the interest felt in Dr. 
Luther in our own land, true German that he is, still less 
did I expect that his fame would have reached to Paris, 
and even further. 

The night before I reached this city I was weary with a 
long day’s walk in the dust and heat, and had fallen asleep 
on a bench in the garden outside a village inn, under the 
shade of a trellised vine, leaving my pack partly open beside 
me. When I awoke, a grave and dignified-looking man, 
who, from the richness of his dress and arms, seemed to be 
a nobleman, and, from the cut of his slashed doublet aud 
mantle, a Spaniard, sat beside me, deeply engaged in read¬ 
ing one of my books. I did not stir at first, but watched 
him in silence. The book he held was a copy of Luther’s 
commentary on the Galatians, in Latin. 

In a few minutes I moved, and respectfully saluted him. 

“Is this book for sale?” he asked. 

I said it was, and named the price. He immediately laid 
down twice the sum, saying, “Give a copy to some one who 
cannot buy.” 

I ventured to ask if he had seen it before. 

“I have,” he said. “Several copies were sent by a Swiss 
printer, Frobenius, to Castile. And I saw it before at 
Venice. It is prohibited in both Castile and Venice now. 
But I have always wished to possess a copy, that I might 
judge for myself. Do you know Dr. Luther?” he asked, 
as he moved away. 

“I have known and reverenced him for many years,” I 
said. 

“They say his life is blameless, do they not?” he asked. 

“Even his bitterest enemies confess it to be so,” I 
replied. 

“He spoke a like a brave man before the Diet,” he re¬ 
sumed; “gravely and quietly, as true men speak who are 
prepared to abide by their words. A noble of Castile could 
not have spoken with more dignity than that peasant’s 
son. The Italian priests thought otherwise; but the ora¬ 
tory which melts girls into tears from pulpits is not the 
eloquence for the councils of men. That little monk had 
learned his oratory in a higher school. If you ever see Dr» 


266 


THE SOHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Luther again,” he added, “tell him that some Spaniards, 
even in the emperor’s court, wished him well.” 

And here in Paris I find a little band of devout and 
learned men, Lefevre, Farel, and Biqonnet, bishop of 
Meaux, actively employed in translating and circulating 
the writings of Luther and Melancthon. The truth in 
them, they say, they had learned before from the book of 
God itself, namely, justification through faith in a crucified 
Saviour leading to a life devoted to him. But jealous as the 
French are of admitting the superiority of anything for¬ 
eign, and contemptuously as they look on us unpolished 
Germans, the French priests welcome Luther as a teacher 
and a brother, and are as eager to hear all particulars of his 
life as his countrymen in every town and quiet village 
throughout Germany. 

They tell me also that the king’s own sister, the beauti¬ 
ful and learned Duchess Margaret of Valois, reads Dr. 
Luther’s writings, and values them greatly. 

Indeed, I sometimes think if he had carried out the in¬ 
tention he formed some years since, of leaving Wittenberg 
for Paris, he would have found a noble sphere of action 
here. The people are so frank in speech, so quick in feel¬ 
ing and perception; and their bright, keen wit cuts so much 
more quickly to the heart of a fallacy than our sober, plod¬ 
ding, northern intellect. 


Basil. 

Before I left Ebernburg, the knight Ulrich von Hutten 
had taken a warm interest in my expedition; had especially 
recommended me to seek out Erasmus, if ever I reached 
Switzerland; and had himself placed some copies of Eras¬ 
mus’ sermons, “ Praise of Folly,” among my books. 

Personally I feel a strong attachment to that brave 
knight. I can never forget the generous letter he wrote to 
Luther before his appearance at the Diet: “The Lord hear 
thee in the day of trouble: the name of the God of Jacob 
defend thee. Oh my beloved Luther, my revered father, 
fear not; be strong. Fight valiantly for Christ. As for 
me, I also will fight bravely. Would to God I might see 
how they knit their brows. . . . May Christ preserve you.” 

Yes, to see the baffled enemies knit their brows as they 
did then, would have been a triumph to the impetuous sol¬ 
dier, but at the time he was prohibited from approaching 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


267 


the court. Luther’s courageous and noble defense filled 
him with enthusiastic admiration. He declared the doctor 
to be a greater soldier than any of the knights. When we 
heard of Luther’s disappearance he would have collected a 
band of daring spirits like himself, and scoured the coun¬ 
try in search of him. Hutten’s objects were high and un¬ 
selfish. He had no mean and petty ambitions. With sword 
and pen he had contended against oppression and hypoc¬ 
risy. To him the Roman court was detestable, chiefly as a 
foreign yoke; the corrupt priesthood, as a domestic usur¬ 
pation. He had a high ideal of knighthood, and believed 
that his order, enlightened by learning, and inspired by a 
free and lofty faith, might emancipate Germany and 
Christendom. Personal danger he despised, and personal 
aims. 

Yet with all his fearlessness and high aspirations, I 
scarcely think he hoped himself to be the hero of his ideal 
chivalry. The self-control of the pure true knight was too 
little his. In his visions of a Christendom from which 
falsehood and avarice were to be banished, and where 
authority was to reside in an order of ideal knights, Franz 
von Sickengin, the brave good lord of Ebernburg, with 
his devout wife Hedwiga, was to raise the standard, around 
which Ulrich and all the true men in the land were to rally. 
Luther, Erasmus, and Sickingen, he thought—the types 
of the three orders, learning, knighthood, and priesthood, 
might regenerate the wrold. 

Erasmus had begun the work with unveiling the light in 
the sancturaries of learning. Luther had carried it on by 
dilfusing the light among the people. The knights must 
complete it by forcibly scattering the powers of darkness. 
Conflict is Erasmus’ detestation. It is Luther’s necessity. 
It is Hutten’s delight. 

I did not, however, expect much sympathy in my work 
from Erasmus. It seemed to me that Hutten, admiring 
his clear, luminous genius, attributed to him the fire of 
his own warm and courageous heart. However, I in¬ 
tended to seek him out at Basil. 

Circumstances saved me the trouble. 

As I was entering the city, with my pack nearly empty, 
hoping to replenish it from the presses of Frobenius, an 
elderly man, with a stoop in his shoulders, giving him the 
air of a student, ambled slowly past me, clad in a doctor’s 


268 


TEE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


gown and hat, edged with a broad border of fur. The 
keen, small dark eyes surveyed me and my pack for a 
minute, and then reining in his horse he joined me, and 
said, in a soft voice and courtly accent, “We are of the 
same profession, friend. We manufacture, and you sell. 
What have you in your pack?” 

I took out three of my remaining volumes. One was 
Luther’s “Commentary on the Galatians;” the others, his 
“Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer,” and his “Letter to the 
German Nobles.” 

The rider’s brow darkened slightly, and he eyed me 
suspiciously. 

“ Men who supply ammunition to the people in times of 
insurrection seldom do it at their own risk,” he said. 
“Young man, you are on a perilous mission, and would do 
well to count the cost.” 

“I have counted the cost, sir,” I said, “and I willingly 
brave the peril.” 

“Well, well,” he replied, “some are born for battle¬ 
fields, and some for martyrdom; others for neither. Let 
each keep to his calling: 

‘ Nequissimam pacem justissimo bello antifero,’ 

But ‘those who let in the sea on the marshes little know 
where it will spread.’ ” 

This illustration from the Dutch dikes awakened my 
suspicions as to the rider who was, and looking at the thin, 
sensitive, yet satirical lips, the delicate, sharply cut fea¬ 
tures, the pallid complexion, and the dark, keen eyes I had 
seen represented in so many portraits, I could not doubt 
with whom I was speaking. But I did not betray my 
discovery. 

“ Dr. Luther has written some good things, nevertheless,” 
he said. “ If he had kept to such devotional works as this,” 
returning to me “The Lord’s Prayer,” “he might have 
served his generation quietly and well; but to expose such 
mysteries as are treated of here to the vulgar gaze, it is 
madness!” and he hastily closed the “Galatians.” Then 
glancing at the “Letter to the Nobles,” he almost threw 
it into my hand, saying petulantly: 

“ That pamphlet is an insurrection in itself. 

“What other books have you?” he asked after a pause. 

I drew out my last copy of the “Encomium of Folly.” 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


269 


“Have yon sold many of these?” he asked coolly. 

“All but this copy,” I replied. 

“And what did people say of it?” 

“That depended on the purchasers,” I replied. “Some 
say the author is the wisest and wittiest man of the age, 
and if all knew where to stop as he does, the world would 
slowly grow into paradise, instead of being turned upside 
down as it is now. Others, on the contrary, say that the 
writer is a coward, who has no courage to confess the 
truth he knows. And others, again, declare the book is 
worse than any of Luther’s, and that Erasmus is the source 
of all the mischief in the world, since if he had not broken 
the lock, Luther would never have entered the door.” 

“And you think?” he asked. 

“I am but a poor peddler, sir,” I said; “but I think 
there is a long way between Pilate’s delivering up the 
glorious King he knew was innocent—perhaps began to see 
might be divine, and St. Peter’s denying the Master he 
loved. And the Lord who forgave Peter knows which is 
which; which the timid disciple, and which the cowardly 
friend of his foes. But the eye of man, it seems to me, 
may find it impossible to distinguish. I would rather be 
Luther at the Diet of Worms, and under anathema and 
ban, than either.” 

“Bold words,” he said, “to prefer an excommunicated 
heretic to the prince of the apostles.” But a shade passed 
over his face, and courteously bidding me farewell, he 
rode on. 

The conversation seemed to have thrown a shadow and 
chill over my heart. 

After a time, however, the rider slackened his pace 
again, and beckoned to me to rejoin him. 

“Have you friends in Basil?” he asked kindly. 

“None,” I replied; “but I have letters to the printer 
Frobenius, and I was recommended to seek out Erasmus.” 

“Who recommended you to do that?” he asked. 

“The good knight Ulrich von Hutten,” I replied. 

“The prince of all turbulent spirits!” he murmured 
gravely. “ Little indeed is there in common between Eras¬ 
mus of Rotterdam and that firebrand.” 

“ Ritter Ulrich has the greatest admiration for the genius 
of Erasmus,” I said, “and thinks that his learning, with 
the swords of a few good knights, and the preaching of 
Luther, might set Christendom right.” 


270 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“Ulrich von Hutten should set his own life right first,” 
was the reply. “But let us leave speaking of Christendom 
and these great projects, which are altogether beyond our 
sphere. Let the knights set chivalry right, and the cardi¬ 
nals the papacy, and the emperor the empire. Let the 
hawker attend to his pack, and Erasmus to his studies. 
Perhaps hereafter it will be found that his satires on the 
follies of the monasteries, and above all his earlier transla¬ 
tion of the New Testament, had their share in the good 
work. His motto is, ‘Kindle the light, and the darkness 
will disperse of itself. ’ ” 

“ If Erasmus,” I said, “ would only consent to share in the 
result he has indeed contributed so nobly to bring about!” 

“Share in what?” he replied quickly; “in the excom¬ 
munication of Luther? or in the wild projects of Hutten? 
Have it supposed that he approves of the coarse and violent 
invectives of the Saxon monk, or the daring schemes of the 
adventurous knight? No; St. Paul wrote courteously, and 
never returned railing for railing. Erasmus should wait 
till he find a reformer like the apostle ere he join the refor¬ 
mation. But, friend,” he added, “I do not deny that 
Luther is a good man, and means well. If you like to 
abandon your perilous pack, and take to study, you may 
come to my house, and I will help you as far as I can with 
money and counsel. For I know what it is to be poor, and 
I think you ought to be better than a hawker. And,” he 
added, bringing his horse to a stand, “if you hear Erasmus 
maligned again as a coward or a traitor, you may say that 
God has more room in his kingdom than any men have in 
their schools; and that it is not alway so easy for men who 
see things on many sides to embrace one. Believe also that 
the loneliness of those who see too much or dare too little 
to be partisans, often has anguish bitterer than the scaffolds 
of martyrs. But,” he concluded in a low voice, as he left 
me, “be careful never again to link the names of Erasmus 
and Hutten. I assure you nothing can be more unlike. 
And Ulrich von Hutten is a most rash and dangerous 
man.” 

“I will be careful never to forget Erasmus,” I said, bow¬ 
ing low, as I took the hand he offered. And the doctor 
rode on. 

Yes, the sorrows of the undecided are doubtless bitterer 
than those of the courageous; bitterer as poison is bitterer 


THE SCHOFBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


m 


than medicine, as an enemy’s wound is bitterer than a 
physician’s. Yet it is true that the clearer the insight into 
difficulty and danger, the greater need be the courage to meet 
them. The path of the rude,simple man who sees nothing but 
right on one side, and nothing but wrong on the other is nec¬ 
essarily plainer than his who, seeing much evil in the good 
cause, and some truth at the foundation of all error, chooses 
to suffer for the right, mixed as it is, and to suffer side by 
side with men whose manners distress him, just because he 
believes the cause is on the whole that of truth and God. 
Luther’s school may not indeed have room for Erasmus, 
nor Erasmus’ school for Luther; but God may have com¬ 
passion and room for both. At Basil I replenished my pack 
from the stores of Frobenius, and received very inspiriting 
tidings from him of the spread of the truth of the gospel 
(especially by means of the writings of Luther) into Italy 
and Spain. I did not apply further to Erasmus. 

Near Zurich, July. 

My heart is full of resurrection hymns. Everywhere in 
the world it seems Easter-tide. This morning, as I left 
Zurich, and, climbing one of the heights on this side, looked 
down on the lake, rippled with silver, through the ranges 
of green and forest-covered hills, to the glorious barrier of 
far-off mountains, purple, and golden, and snow-crowned, 
which encircles Switzerland, and thought of the many 
hearts which, during these years, have been awakened here 
to the liberty of the sons of God, the old chant of Easter 
and spring burst from my lips: 

. Plaudite coeli, . 

... Rideat aetlier . 

.... Summits et imus .. 

. Gaudeat orbis! . 

.. Transivit atrae . 

. Turba procellae! . 

. Subuit almae . 

.. Gloria palmae! .. 

. ... Surgite verni, .*.. 

. Surgite flores, . 

. Germina pictis . 

. Surgite campisl . 

. Teneris mistae . 

. Yiolis rosae; . 

... Candida sparsis . 

. Lilia calthisl . 


































m 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


Currite plenis 
Carmina venis, 
Fundite lsetum 
Barbita metrum; 
Namque revixit 
Sicuti dixit 
Pius illsesus 
Funere Jesus. 

Plaudite montes 
Ludite fontes, 
Resonent valles, 
Repetant collesl 
Io revixit 
Sciente dixit 
Pius illaesus 
Funere Jesus.* 


* Smile praises, oil sky! 

Soft breathe them, oh air, 
Below and on high, 

And everywhere! 

The black troop of storms 
Has yielded to calm; 

Tufted blossoms are peeping, 

And early palm. 

Awake ye, oh Spring! 

Ye flowers, come forth. 

With thousand hues tinting 
The soft green earth! 

Ye violets tender, 

And sweet roses bright, 

Gay Lent-lilies blended 
With pure lilies white. 

Sweep tides of rich music 
The new world along, 

And pour in full measure, 

Sweet lyres, your song! 

Sing, sing, for He liveth! 

He lives, as He said; 

The Lord has arisen, 

Unharmed, from the dead! 

Clap, clap, your hands, mountains! 

Ye valleys, resound! 

Leap, leap for joy, fountains! 

Ye hills, catch the sound! 

All triumph; He liveth! 

He lives, as He said: 

The Lord has arisen, 

Unharmed, from the dead! 



































































































THE SCBONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


273 


And when I ceased, the monntain stream which dashed 
over the rocks beside me, the whispering grasses, the trem¬ 
bling wild flowers, the rustling forests, the lake with its 
ripples, the green hills and solemn snow-mountains beyond 
—all seemed to take up the chorus. 

There is a wonderful, invigorating influence about Ulrich 
Zwingle, with whom I have spent many days lately. It 
seems as if the fresh air of the mountains among which he 
passed his youth were always around him. In his presence 
it is impossible to despond. While Luther remains im¬ 
movably holding at every step he has taken, Zwingle presses 
on, and surprises the enemy asleep in his strongholds. 
Luther carries on the war like the Landsknechts, our own 
firm and impenetrable infantry; Zwingle, like his own im¬ 
petuous mountaineers, sweeps down from the heights upon 
the foe. 

In Switzerland I and my books have met with more sud¬ 
den and violent varieties of reception than a nywhere else 
the people are so free and unrestrained. In some villages, 
the chief men, or the priest himself, summoned all the in¬ 
habitants by the church bell, to hear all I had to tell about 
Dr. Luther and his work, and to buy his books; my stay 
was one constant fete; and the warm-hearted peasants 
accompanied me miles on my way, discoursing of Zwingle 
and Luther, the broken yoke of Rome, and the glorious 
days of freedom that were coming. The names of Luther 
and Zwingle were on every lip, like those of Tell and 
Winkelried and the heroes of the old struggle of Swiss 
liberation. 

In other villages, on the contrary, the peasants gathered 
angrily around me, reviled me as a spy and an intruding 
foreigner, and drove me with stones and rough jests from 
among them, threatening that I should not escape so easily 
another time. 

In some places they have advanced much further than 
among us in Germany. The images have been removed 
from the churches, and the service is read in the language 
of the people. 

But the great joy is to see that the light has not been 
spread only from torch to torch, as human illuminations 
spread, but has burst at once on Germany, France, and 
Switzerland, as heavenly light dawns from above. It is 
this which makes it not a lurid illumination merely, but 


274 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


morning and spring. Lefevre in France and Zwingle in 
Switzerland both passed through their period of storms and 
darkness, and both, awakened by the heavenly light to the 
new world, found that it was no solitude—that others were 
also awake, and that the day’s work had begun, as it should, 
with matin songs. 

Now I am tending northward once more. I intend to 
renew my stores at my father’s press at Wittenberg. My 
heart yearns also for news of all dear to me there. Per¬ 
haps, too, I may yet see Dr. Luther, and find scope for 
preaching the evangelical doctrine among my own people. 

For better reports have come to us from Germany, and 
we believe Dr. Luther is in friendly keeping, though where 
is still a mystery. 

The Prison of a Dominican Convent, 
Franconia, August. 

All is changed for me. Once more prison walls are 
around me, and through prison bars I look out on the 
world I may not re-enter. I counted this among the costs 
when I resolved to give myself to spreading far and wide 
the glad tidings of redemption. It was worth the cost; it 
is worth whatever man can inflict—for I trust those days 
have not been spent in vain. 

Yesterday evening, as the day was sinking, I found my 
way once more to the parsonage of Priest Ruprecht in the 
Franconian village. The door was open, but I heard no 
voices. There was a neglected look about the little garden. 
The vine was hanging untwined around the porch. The 
little dwelling, which had been so neat, had a dreary, 
neglected air. Dust lay thick on the chairs, and the re¬ 
mains of the last meal were left on the table. And yet it 
was evidently not unoccupied. A book lay upon the win¬ 
dow-sill, evidently lately read. It was the copy of Luther’s 
German commentary on the Lord’s Prayer which I had left 
on that evening many months ago in the porch. 

I sat down in a window seat, and in a little while I saw 
the priest coming slowly up the garden. His form was 
much bent since I saw him last. He did not look up as he 
approached the house. It seemed as if he expected no wel¬ 
come. But when I went out to meet him, he grasped my 
hand cordially, and his face brightened. When, however, 
he glanced at the book in my hand, a deeper shade passed 


TEE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 275 

over his brow; and motioning me to a chair, he sat down 
opposite me without speaking. 

After a few minutes he looked up, and said in a husky 
voice, “ That book did what all the denunciations and ter¬ 
rors of the old doctrine could not do. It separated us. 
She has left me.” 

He paused for some minutes, and then continued: “The 
evening that she found that book in the porch, when I re¬ 
turned I found her reading it. ‘See!’ she said, ‘at last 
some one has written a religious book for me! It was left 
here open, in the porch, at these words: “If thou dost 
feel that in the sight of God and all creatures thou art a 
fool, a sinner, impure, and condemned, .... there re- 
maineth no solace for thee, and no salvation, unless in Jesus 
Christ. To know him is to understand what the apostle 
says—‘Christ hasof God been made unto us wisdom, and 
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’ He is 
the bread of God—our bread, given to us as children of the 
heavenly Father. To believe is nothing else than to eat 
this bread from heaven.” And look again. The book 
says it touches God’s heart when we call him Father, and 
again, “ Which art in heaven.” He that acknowledges he 
has a Father who is in heaven, owns that he is like an 
orphan on the earth. Hence his heart feels an ardent 
longing, like a child living away from its father’s country, 
among strangers, wretched and forlorn. It is as if he 
said, “Alas! my Father, thou art in heaven, and, I thy 
miserable child, am on the earth, far from thee, amid dan¬ 
ger, necessity, and sorrow.” Ah, Ruprecht,’ she said, her 
eyes streaming with tears, ‘that is so like what I feel, so 
lost, and orphaned, and far away from home.’ And then, 
fearing she had grieved me, she added, ‘Not that I am 
neglected. Thou knowest I could never feel that. But 
oh, can it be possible that God would take me back, not 
after long years of penance, but now, and here , to his very 
heart?’ 

“I could say little to teach her, but from that time this 
book was her constant companion. She begged me to find 
out all the passages in my Latin Gospels which speak of 
Jesus suffering for sinners, and of God as the Father. I 
was amazed to see how many there were. The book seemed 
full of them. And so we went on for some days, until one 
evening she came to me, and said, ‘Ruprecht, if God is in- 


276 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


deed so infinitely kind and good, and has so loved ns, we 
must obey him, must we not?’ I could not for the world 
say no, and I had not courage to say yes, for I knew what 
she meant.” 

Again he paused. 

“I knew too well what she meant, when, on the next 
morning, I found the breakfast laid, and everything swept 
and prepared as usual, and on the table, in printed letters 
on a scrap of paper, which she must have copied from the 
book, for she could not write, ‘Farewell. We shall be able 
to pray for each other now. And God will be with us, and 
will give us to meet hereafter, without fear of grieving him, 
in our Father’s house.’ ” 

“ Do you know where she is?” I asked. 

“She has taken service in a farmhouse several miles 
away in the forest,” he replied. “I have seen her once. 
She looked very thin and worn. But she did not see me.” 

The thought which had so often suggested itself to me 
before, come with irresistible force into my mind then—“ If 
those vows of celibacy are contrary to the will of God, can 
they be binding?” But I did not venture to suggest them 
to my host. I only said, “ Let us pray that God will lead 
you both. The heart can bear many a heavy burden if the 
conscience is free.” 

“True,” he said. And together we knelt down, while 
I spoke to God. And the burden of our prayer was neither 
more nor less than this, “ Our Father which art in heaven, 
not my will, but thine be done.” 

On the morrow I bade him farewell, leaving him several 
other works of Luther’s. And I determined not to lose 
an hour in seeking Melancthon and the doctors at Witten¬ 
berg, and placing this case before them. 

And now, perhaps, I shall never see Wittenberg again! 

It is not often that I have ventured into the monasteries 
but to-day a young monk, who was walking in the meadows 
of this abbey, seemed so interested in my books, that I fol¬ 
lowed him to the convent, where he thought I should dis¬ 
pose of many copies. Instead of this, however, while I 
was waiting in the porch for him to return, I heard the 
sound of angry voices in discussion inside, and before I 
could perceive what it meant, three or four monks came to 
me, seized my pack, bound my hands, and dragged me to 
the convent prison, where I now am. 


THE SGEONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


277 


“It is time that this pestilence should be checked,” said 
one of them. “Be thankful if your fate is not the same as 
that of your poisonous hooks, which are this evening to 
make a bonfire in the court.” 

And with these words I was left alone in this low, damp, 
dark cell, with its one little slit high in the wall, which just 
admits light enough to show the iron fetters hanging from 
the walls. But what power can make me a captive while I 
can sing: 


. Mortis portis fractis, fortis .. 

. Fortior vin sustulit; . 

. Et per crucem regem trucem, . 

. Infernorum perculit. . 

. Lumen clarum tenebrarum . 

. Sedibus resplenduit; . 

. Dum salvare, recreare . 

. Quod creavit, voluit. . 

. Hinc Creator, ne peccator, . 

. Moreretur, moritur; . 

. Cujus morte, nova sorte, . 

. Vita nobis oritur.* . 

Are not countless hearts now singing this resurrection 
hymn, to some of whom my hands brought the joyful tid¬ 
ings? In the lonely parsonage, in the forest and farm, 
hearts set free by love from the fetters of sin—in village 
and city, in mountain and plain! 

And at Wittenberg, in happy homes, and in the convent, 
are not my beloved singing it too? 


September. 

Yet the time seems long to lie in inaction here. With 
these tidings, “The Lord is risen,” echoing through her 


* Lo, the gates of death are broken 

And the strong man armed is spoiled 
Of his armor, which he trusted— 

By the stronger Arm despoiled, 
Vanquished is the Prince of Hell; 
Smitten by the cross, he fell. 

That the sinner might not perish, 

For him the Creator dies; 

By whose death, our dark lot changing, 
Life again for us doth rise. 















































278 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


heart, would it not have been hard for the Magdalene to 
be arrested on her way to the bereaved disciples before she 
could tell it? 

October. 

I have a hope of escape. In a corner of my prison I 
discovered, some days since, the top of an arch, which I 
believe must belong to a blocked-up door. By slow degrees 
—working by night, and covering over my work by day—• 
I have dug out a flight of steps which lead to it. This 
morning 1 succeeded in dislodging one of the stones with 
which the doorway had been roughly filled up, and through 
the space surveyed the ground outside. It was a portion 
of a meadow, sloping to the stream which turned the abbey 
mills. This morning two of the monks came to summon 
me to an examination before the prior, as to my heresies, 
but to-night I hope to dislodge the few more stones, and 
this very night, before morning dawn, to be treading with 
free steps the forest-covered hills beyond the valley. 

My limbs feel feeble with insufficient food, and the damp, 
close air of the cell; and the blood flows with feverish, un¬ 
certain rapidity through my veins; but, doubtless, a few 
hours on the fresh, breezy hills will set all this right. 

And yet once more I shall see my mother, and Else, and 
Thekla, and little Gretchen, and all—all but one, who, I 
fear, is still imprisoned in convent walls. Yet once more 
I trust to go throughout the land spreading the joyful tid¬ 
ings, “The Lord is risen indeed;” the work of redemption 
is accomplished, and he who once lived and suffered on 
earth, compassionate to heal, now lives and reigns in 
heaven, mighty to save. 

thekla’s story. 

Tunnenberg, May, 1521. 

Is the world really the same? Was there really ever a 
spring like this, when the tide of life seems overflowing and 
budding up in leaf-buds, flowers, and songs, and streams? 

It cannot be only that God has given me the great bless¬ 
ing of Bertrand de Crequi’s love, and that life opens in 
such bright fields of hope and work before us two; or that 
this is the first spring I ever spent in the country. It 
seems to me that God is really pouring a tide of fresh life 
throughout the world. 


THE SC HON B ERG-CO TTA FAMILY. 


279 


Fritz has escaped from the prison at Mainz, and he writes 
as if he felt this an Easter-tide for all men. In all places, he 
says, the hearts of men are opening to the glad tidings of 
the redeeming love of God. 

Can it be, however, that every May is such a festival 
among the woods, and that this solemn old forest holds such 
fairy holiday every year, garlanding its bare branches and 
strewing every brown nook which a sunbeam can reach, 
with showers of flowers, such as we strew on a bride’s path? 
And then, who could have imagined that those grave old 
firs and stately birches could become the cradles of all these 
delicate-tufted blossoms and tenderly-folded leaflets, burst¬ 
ing on all sides from their gummy casings? And—joy of 
all joys! it is not unconscious vegetable life only which thus 
expands around us. It is God touching every branch and 
hidden root, and waking them to beauty. It is not sun¬ 
shine merely, and soft breezes; it is our Father smiling on 
his works, and making the world fresh and fair for his 
children—it is the healing touch and the gracious Voice we 
have learned to know. “We are in the world, and the 
world was made by Thee;” and “ Te Deum laudavms: we 
acknowledge thee, oh Saviour, to be the Lord.” 

Our Chriemhild certainly has a beautiful home. Ber¬ 
trand’s home, also, is a castle in the country, in Flanders. 
But he says their country is not like this forest-land. It has 
long been cleared by industrious hands. There are long, 
stately avenues leading to his father’s chateau; but all 
around, the land is level and waving with grass and green 
or golden corn-fields. That, also, must be beautiful. But 
probably the home he has gone to prepare for me may not 
be there. Some of his family are very bitter against what 
they call his Lutheran herssy, and although he is the heir, 
it is very possible that the branch of the family which ad¬ 
heres to the old religion may wrest the inheritance from 
him. That, we think, matters little. God will find the 
right place for us, and lead us to it, if we ask him. And 
if it be in the town, after all, the tide of life in human 
hearts is nobler than that in trees and flowers. In a few 
months we shall know. Perhaps he may return here, and 
become a professor at Wittenberg, whither Dr. Luther’s 
name brought him a year since to study. 

June, 1521. 

A humor has reached us, that Dr. Luther has disappeared 
on his way back from Worms. 


280 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


This spring in the world as well as in the forest, wiil 
doubtless have its storms. Last night, the thunder echoed 
from hill to hill, and the wind wailed wildly among the 
pines. Looking out of my narrow window in the tower on 
the edge of the rock, where I sleep, it was awful to see the 
foaming torrent below gleaming in the lightning-flashes, 
which opened at sudden glimpses into the depths of the 
forest, leaving it doubly mysterious. 

I thought of Fritz’s lonely night, when he lost himself in 
the forest; and thanked God that I had learned to know 
the thunder as his voice, and his voice as speaking peace 
and pardon. Only, at such times I should like to gather 
all dear to me around me; and those dearest to me are scat¬ 
tered far and wide. 

The old knight Ulrich is rather impetuous and hot- 
tempered; and his sister, Ulrich’s aunt, Dame Hermen- 
trud, is grave and stately. Fortunately, they both look on 
Chriemhild as a wonder of beauty and goodness; but I 
have to be rather careful. Dame Hermentrud is apt to 
attribute any over-vehemence of mine in debate to the 
burgher Cotta blood; and although they both listen with 
interest to Ulrich or Chriemhild’s version of Dr. Luther’s 
doctrines, Dame Hermentrud frequently warns me against 
unfeminine exaggeration or eagerness in these matters, and 
reminds me that the ancestors of the Gersdorf family were 
devout and excellent people long before a son was born to 
Hans Luther the miner. 

The state of the peasants distresses Chriemhild and me 
extremely. She and Ulrich were full of plans for their 
good when they came here to live; hut she is at present 
almost exclusively occupied with the education of a little 
knightly creature, who came into the world two months 
since, and is believed to concentrate in his single little per¬ 
son all the ancestral virtues of all the Gersdorfs, to say 
nothing of the Schonbergs. He has not, Dame Hermen¬ 
trud asserts, the slightest feature of resemblance to the 
Cottas. I cannot, certainly, deny that he bears unmistak¬ 
able traces of that aristocratic temper and that lofty taste 
for ruling which at times distinguished my grandmother, 
and, doubtless, all the Gersdorfs from the days of Adam 
downward, or at least from the time of Babel. Beyond 
that, I believe, few pedigrees are traced, except in a general 
way to the sons of Noah. But it is a great honor for me 


TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 281 

to be connected, even in the humblest manner, with such 
a distinguished little being. In time, I am not without 
hopes that it will introduce a little reflex nobility even into 
my burgher nature; and meantime Chriemhild and I 
secretly trace remarkable resemblances in her dear baby 
features to our grandmother, and even to our beloved, san¬ 
guine, blind father. It is certainly a great consolation that 
our father chose our names from the poems and the stars 
and the calendar of aristocratic saints, instead of from the 
lowly Cotta pedigree. 

Ulrich has not indeed by any means abandoned his 
scheme of usefulness among the peasantry who live on his 
uncle’s estate. But he finds more opposition than he ex¬ 
pected. The old knight, although ready enough to listen 
to any denunciations of the self-indulgent priests and lazy 
monks (especially those of the abbey whose hunting-grounds 
adjoin his own), is very averse to making the smallest 
change in anything. He says the boors are difficult enough 
to keep in order as it is; that if they are taught to 
think for themselves, there will be no safety for the game, 
or for anything else. They will be quoting the Bible in 
all kinds of wrong senses against their rightful lords, and 
will perhaps even take to debating the justice of the hered¬ 
itary feuds, and refuse to follow their knight’s banner to 
the field. 

As to religion, he is quite sure that the ave and the 
pater are as much as will be expected of them; while 
Dame Hermentrud has most serious doubts of this new 
plan of writing books and reading prayers in the language 
of the common people. They will be thinking themselves 
as wise as the priests, and perhaps wiser than their masters. 

But Ulrich’s chief disappointment is with the peasants 
themselves. They seem as little anxious for improvement 
as the lords are for them, and are certainly suspicious to 
a most irritating degree of any schemes for their welfare 
issuing from the castle. As to their children being taught 
to read, they consider it an invasion of their rights, and 
murmur that if they follow the nobles in hunt and foray, 
and till their fields, and go to mass on Sunday, the rest of 
their time is their own, and it is a usurpation in priest or 
knight to demand more. 

It will, I fear, be long before the dry, barren crust of 
their dull, hard life is broken; and yet the words of life are 


THE SCHONBEllQ-COTTA FAMILY 


282 


for them as much as for ns! And one great difficulty seems 
to me, that if they were taught to read, there are so few 
German religious books. Except a few tracts of Dr. 
Luther’s, what is there that they could understand? If 
some one would only translate the record of the words and 
acts of our Lord and his apostles, it would be worth while 
then teaching every one to read. 

And if we could only get them to confide in us. There 
must be thought, and we know there is affection underneath 
all this reserve. It is a heavy heritage for the long ances¬ 
try of the Gersdorfs to have bequeathed to this generation, 
these recollections of tyranny and wrong, and this mutual 
distrust. Yet Ulrich says it is too common throughout 
the land. Many of the old privileges of the nobles were so 
terribly oppressive in hard or careless hands. 

The most promising field at present seems to be among 
the household retainers. Among these there is strong 
personal attachment; and the memory of Ulrich’s pious 
mother seems to have left behind it that faith in goodness 
which is one of the most precious legacies of holy lives. 

Even the peasants in the village speak lovingly of her; 
of the medicines she used to distill from the forest-herbs, 
and distribute with her own hands to the sick. There is 
a tradition also in the castle of a bright maiden called 
Beatrice, who used to visit the cottage homes, and bring 
sunshine whenever she came. But she disappeared years 
ago, they say; and the old family nurse shakes her head as 
she tells me how the Lady Beatrice’s heart was broken, 
when she was separated by family feuds from her be¬ 
trothed, and after that she went to the convent at Nimpt- 
schen, and had been dead' to the world ever since. 

Nimptschen! that is the living grave where our precious 
Eva is buried. And yet where she is I am sure it can be 
no grave of death. She will bring life and blessings with 
her. I will write her, especially about this poor blighted 
Beatrice. 

Altogether the peasants seem much less suspicious of the 
women of the Gerdsdorf family than of the men. They 
will often listen attentively even to me. And when 
Chriemhild can go among them a little more, I hope better 
days will dawn. 

August, 1521. 

This morning we had a strange encounter. Some days 
since we received a mysterious intimation from Wittenberg, 


TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


283 


that Dr Luther is alive and in friendly keeping, not far 
from us. To-day Ulrich and I were riding through the 
forest to visit an outlying farm of the Gersdorfs in the 
direction of Eisenach, when we heard across a valley the 
huntsman’s horn, with the cry of the dogs in full chase. 
In a few moments an opening among the trees brought us 
in sight of the hunt sweeping toward 11 s up the opposite 
slopes of the valley. Apart from the hunt, and nearer us 
at a narrow part of the valley, we observed a figure in the 
cap and plumes of a knight, apparently watching the chase 
as we were. As we were looking at him, a poor bewildered 
leveret fled toward him, and cowered close to his feet. He 
stooped, and gently taking it up, folded it in the long sleeve 
of his tunic, and stepped quickly aside. In another min¬ 
ute, however, the hunt swept up toward him, and the dogs, 
scenting the leveret, seized on it in its refuge, dragged it 
down, and killed it. 

This unusual little incident, this human being putting 
himself on the side of the pursued, instead of among the 
pursuers, excited our attention. There was also something 
in the firm figure and sturdy gait that perplexingly re¬ 
minded us of some one we knew. Our road lay across the 
valley, and Ulrich rode aside to greet the strange knight. 
In a moment he returned to me, and whispered: 

“It is Martin Luther!” 

We could not resist the impulse to look once more on the 
kind, honest face, and riding close to him we bowed to him. 

He gave us a smile of recognition, and laying his hand on 
Ulrich’s saddle said, softly,“ The chase is a mystery of higher 
things. See how, as these ferocious dogs seized my poor lev¬ 
eret from its refuge, Satan rages against souls, and seeks to 
tear from their hiding-places even those already saved. But 
the arm which holds them is stronger than mine. I have had 
enough of this kind of chase,” he added; “sweeter to me 
the chase of the bears, wolves, boars, and foxes which lay 
waste the church, than of these harmless creatures. And 
of such rapacious beasts there are enough in the world.” 

My heart was full of the poor peasants I had been seeing 
lately. I never could feel afraid of Dr. Luther, and this 
opportunity was too precious to be thrown away. It 
always seemed the most natural thing in the world to open 
one’s heart to him. He understood so quickly and so 
fully. As he was wishing us good-by, therefore, I said (I 
am afraid, in that abrupt, blundering way of mine): 


284 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“ Dear Dr. Luther, the poor peasants here are so ignorant! 
and I have scarcely anything to read to them which they 
can understand. Tell some one, I entreat you, to translate 
the gospels into German for them; such German as your 
‘Discourse on the Magnificat,’ or ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ for 
they all understand that.” 

He smiled, and said, kindly: 

“It is being done, my child. I am trying in my Patmos 
tower once more to unveil the Revelation to the common 
people; and, doubtless, they will hear it gladly. That 
book alone is the sun from which all true teachers draw 
their light. Would that it were in the language of every 
man, held in every hand, read by every eye, listened to by 
every ear, treasured up in every heart. And it will be yet, 
I trust.” 

He began to move away, but as we looked reverently 
after him he turned to us again, and said, “Remember the 
wilderness was the scene of the temptation. Pray for me, 
that in the solitude of my wilderness I may be delivered 
from the tempter.” And waving his hand, in a few min¬ 
utes he was out of sight. 

We thought it would be an intrusion to follow him, or to 
inquire where he was concealed. But as the hunt passed 
away, Ulrich recognized one of the huntsmen as a retainer 
of the Elector Frederic at his castle of the Wartburg. 

And now when every night and morning in my prayers 
I add, as usual, the name of Dr. Luther to those of my 
mother and father and all dear to me, I think of him pass¬ 
ing long days and nights alone in that grim castle, looking 
down on the dear old Eisenach valley, and I say, “Lord 
make the wilderness to him the school for his ministry to 
all our land.” 

For was not our Saviour himself led first into the wilder¬ 
ness, to overcome the tempter in solitude, before he came 
forth to teach, and heal, and cast out devils? 


October. 

Ulrich has seen Dr. Luther again. He was walking in 
the forest near the Wartburg, and looked very ill and sad. 
His heart was heavy on account of the disorders in the 
church, the falsehood and bitterness of the enemies of the 
gospel, and the impetuosity or lukewarmness of too many 
of its friends. He said it would almost have been better if 


THE SCHOHB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


m 


they had left him to die by the hands of his enemies. His 
blood might have cried to God for deliverance. He was 
ready to yield himself to them as an ox to the yoke. He 
would rather be burned on live coals, than sleep away the 
precious years thus, half alive, in sloth and ease. And yet, 
from what Ulrich gathered further from him of his daily 
life, his “sloth and ease” would seem arduous toil to most 
men. He saw the room where Dr. Luther lives and labors 
day and night, writing letters of consolation to his friends, 
and masterly replies, they say, to the assailants of the truth, 
and (better than all) translating the Bible from Hebrew 
and Greek into German. 

The room has a large window commanding many reaches 
of the forest; and he showed Ulrich the rookery in the tops 
of the trees below, whence he learned lessons in politics 
from the grave consultations of the rooks who hold their 
Diet there; he also spoke to him of the various creatures 
in rock and forest which soothed his solitude, the birds 
singing among the branches, the berries, wild flowers, and 
the clouds and stars. But he alluded also to fearful con¬ 
flicts, visible and audible appearances of the Evil One; and 
his health seemed much shattered. 

We fear that noble, loving heart is wearing itself out in 
the lonely fortress. He seems chafing like a war-horse at 
the echo of the distant battle, or a hunter at the sound of 
the chase; or, rather, as a captive general who sees his troops 
assailed by force and stratagem, broken and scattered, and 
cannot break his chains to rally and to lead them on. 

Yet he spoke most gratefully of his hospitable treatment 
in the castle; said he was living like a prince or a cardinal; 
and deprecated the thought that the good cause would not 
prosper without his presence. 

“I cannot be with them in death,” he said, “nor they 
with me! Each must fight that last fight, go through that 
passion alone. And only those will overcome who have 
learned how to win the victory before, and grounded deep 
in the heart that word, which is the great power against 
sin and the devil, that Christ has died for each one of us, 
and has overcome Satan forever.” 

He said also that if Melancthon lived it mattered little to 
the church what happened to him. The spirit of Elijah 
came in double power on Elisha. 

And he gave Ulrich two or three precious fragments of 
his translation of the gospels, for me to read to the peasants. 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


m 


November. 

I have gone with my precious bits of the German Bible 
that is to be into many a cottage during this month—simple 
narratives of poor, leprous, and palsied people, who came 
to the Lord, and he touched them and healed their dis¬ 
eases; and of sinners whom he forgave. 

It is wonderful how the simple people seem to drink 
them in; that is, those who care at all for such things. 
“Is this indeed what the Lord Christ is like?” they say; 
“ then, surely, we may speak to him in our own words, and 
ask just what we want, as those poor men and women did 
of old. It is true, indeed, that peasants, women, and sick 
people could come straight to the Lord himself? Was he 
not always kept otf from the common people by a band of 
priests and saints? Was he indeed to be spoken to by all, 
and he such a great Lord?” 

I said that I thought it was the necessity of human 
princes, and not their glory, to be obliged to employ 
deputies, and not let each one plead his own case. They 
look greatest afar off, surrounded by the pomp of a throne, 
because in themselves they are weak and sinful, like other 
men. But He needed no pomp, nor the dignity of distance, 
because he is not like other men, but sinless and divine, 
and the glory is in himself, not in the things around him. 

Then I had a narrative of the crucifixion to read; and 
many a tear have I seen stream over rough cheeks, and 
many a smile beam in dim, aged eyes as I read this. 

“We seem to understand it all at once,” an old woman 
said; “and yet there always seems something more in it 
each time.” 


December. 

This morning I had a letter from Bertrand, the first for 
many weeks. He is full of hope; not, indeed of recover¬ 
ing liis inheritance, but of being at Wittenberg again in a 
few weeks. 

I suppose my face looked very bright when I received it 
and ran with the precious letter to my own room; for 
Dame Hermentrud said much this evening about receiving 
everything with moderation, and about the propriety of 
young maidens having a very still and collected demeanor, 
and about the uncertainty of all things below. My 
heavenly Father knows I do not forget that all things are 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


287 

uncertain; although, often, I dare not dwell on it. But 
he has given me this good gift—he himself—and I will 
thank him with an overflowing heart for it. 

I cannot understand Dame Hermentrud’s religion. She 
seems to think it prudent, and a duty, to take everything 
God gives coolly, as if we did not care very much about it, 
lest he should think he had given us something too good 
for us, and grudge it to us, and take it away again. 

No; if God does take away, he takes away as he gave, in 
infinite love; and I would not for the world add darkness 
to the dark days, if they must come, by the- bitter regret 
that I did not enjoy the sunshine while he gave it. For, 
indeed, I cannot help fearing sometimes, when I think of 
the martyrs of old, and the bitterness of the enemies of the 
good tidings now. But then I try to look up, and try to 
say, “Safer, oh Father, in thy hands than in mine.” And 
all the comfort of the prayer depends on how I can com¬ 
prehend and feel that name, “Father.” 


PART XVII. 

EVA’S STORY. 

Cistercian Convent, Nimptschen, 
September, 1521. 

They have sent me several sheets of Dr. Luther’s trans¬ 
lation of the New Testament, from Uncle Cotta’s press at 
Wittenberg. Of all the works he ever did for God, this 
seems to me the mightiest and the best. None has ever so 
deeply stirred our convent. Many of the sisters positively 
refuse to join in any invocation of the saints. They declare 
that it must be Satan himself who has kept this glorious 
hook locked up in a dead language out of reach of women 
and children and the common people. And the young 
nuns say it is so interesting, it is not in the least like a book 
of sermons, or a religious treatise. 

“It is like everyday life,” said one of them to me, “with 
what every one wants brought into it; a perfect Friend, so 
infinitely good, so near, and so completely understanding 
our inmost hearts. Ah, Sister .Eva,” she added, “if they 
could only hear of this at home!” 



288 


TEE JSCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


October. 

To-day we have received a copy of Dr. Luther’s thesis 
against the monastic life. 

“There is but one only spiritual estate,” he writes, 
“which is holy and makes holy, and that is Christianity, 
the faith which is the common right of all.” 

“Monastic institutions,” he continues, “to be of any use 
ought to be schools, in which children may be brought up 
until they are adults. But as it is, they are houses in 
which men and women become children and ever continue 
childish.” 

Too well, alas! I know the truth of these last words; 
the hopeless, childish occupation with trifles, into which 
the majority of the nuns sink when the freshness of youth 
and the bitter conflict of separation from all dear to the 
heart has subsided, and the great incidents of life have be¬ 
come the decorating the church for a festival, or the pomp 
attending the visit of an inspector or bishop. 

It is against this I have striven. It is this I dread for 
the young sisters; to see them sink into contented trifling 
with religious playthings. And I have been able to see no 
way of escape, unless, indeed, we could be transferred to 
some city and devote ourselves to the care of the sick and 
poor. 

Dr. Luther, however, admits of another solution. We 
hear that he has counseled the prior of the monastery at 
Erfurt to suffer any monks who wish it freely to depart. 
And many, we have been told, in various monasteries have 
already left, and returned to serve God in the world. 

Monks can, indeed, do this. The world is open before 
them, and in some way they are sure to find occupation. 
But with us it is different! Torn away from our natural 
homes, the whole world around us is a trackless desert. 

Yet how can I dare to say this? Since the whole world 
is the work of our heavenly Father’s hands, and may be 
the way to our Father’s house, will not he surely find a 
place for each of us in it, and a path for us through it? 

November 10. 

Nine of the younger nuns have come to the determina¬ 
tion, if possible, to give up the conventual life, with its 
round of superstitious observances. This evening we held 
a consultation in Sister Beatrice’s cell. Aunt Agnes joined 
us. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


289 


It was decided that each should write to her relatives, 
simply confessing that she believed the monastic vows and 
life to be contrary to the holy Scriptures, and praying to be 
received hack into her family. 

Sister Beatrice and Aunt Agnes decided to remain 
patiently where they were. 

“ My old home would be no more a home to me now 
than the convent,” Sister Beatrice said. “There is liberty 
for me to die here, and an open way for my spirit to return 

And Aunt Agnes said: 

“ Who knows but that there may be some lowly work 
left for me to do here yet! In the world I should be as 
helpless as a child, and why should I return to be a burden 
on my kindred?” 

They both urged me to write to Else or Aunt Cotta to 
receive me. But I can scarcely think it my duty. Aunt 
Cotta has her children around her. Else’s home is strange 
to me. Besides, kind as every one has been to me, I am 
as a stray waif on the current of this world, and have no 
home in it. I think God has enabled me to cheer and 
help some few here, and while Aunt Agnes and Sister 
Beatrice remain, I cannot bear the thought of leaving. 
At all events I will wait. 


November 22. 

Fritz is in prison again. For many weeks they had 
heard nothing from him, and were wondering where he 
was, when a letter came from a priest called Ruprecht 
Haller, in Franconia. He says Fritz came to his house 
one evening in July, remained the night, left next morn¬ 
ing with his pack of Lutheran books, intending to proceed 
direct to Wittenberg, and gave him the address of Aunt 
Cotta there. But a few weeks afterward a young monk 
met him near the Dominican convent, and asked if he were 
the priest at whose house a peddler had spent a night a few 
weeks before. The priest admitted it; whereon the 
young monk said to him, in a low, hurried accent: 

“ Write to his friends, if you know them, and say he is in 
the prison of the convent, under strong suspicion of heresy. 
I am the young man to whom he gave a book on the 
evening he came. Tell them I did not intend to betray 
him, although I led him into the net; and if ever they 


290 


THE SCHONBEliG-COTTA FAMILY. 


should procure his escape, and you see him again, tell him 
I have kept his book.” The good priest says something 
also about Fritz having been his salvation. And he urges 
that the most strenuous exertions should be made to liberate 
him, and any powerful friends we have should be entreated 
to intercede, because the prior of the Dominican convent 
where he is imprisoned is a man of the severest temper, 
and a mighty hater of heretics. 

Powerful friends! I know none whom we can entreat 
but God. 

It was in July, then, that he was captured, two months 
since. I wonder if it is only my impatient spirit! but I 
feel as if I must go to Aunt Cotta. I have a feeling she 
will want me now. 

I think I might comfort her; for who can tell what 
two months in a Dominican prison may have done for him? 

In our convent have we not a prison, low, dark, and 
damp enough to weigh the life out of any one in six weeks? 
From one of the massive low pillars hang heavy iron fetters, 
happily rusted now from disuse; and in a corner are a rack 
and other terrible instruments, now thrown aside there, on 
which some of the older nuns say they have seen stains of 
blood. 

When he was in prison before at Mainz, I did not seem 
so desponding about his deliverance as I feel now. 

Are these fears God’s merciful preparations for some 
dreadful tidings about to reach us? or are they the mere 
natural enfeebling of the power to hope as one grows older? 

December, 1521. 

Many disappointments have fallen on us during the last 
fortnight. Answer after answer has come to those touching 
entreaties of the nine sisters to their kindred, in various 
tones of feeling, but all positively refusing to receive them 
back to their homes. 

Some of the relatives use the bitterest reproaches and 
the severest menaces. Others write tenderly and compas¬ 
sionately, but all agree that no noble family can possibly 
bring on itself the disgrace of aiding a professed nun to 
break her vows. Poor children, my heart aches for them, 
some of them are so young, and were so confident of being 
welcomed back with open arms, remembering the tears 
with which they were given up. 


THE SGHONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


291 


Now indeed they are thrown on God. He will not fail 
them; but who can say through what thorny paths their 
feet may have to tread? 

It has also been discovered here that some of them have 
written thus to their relations, which renders their position 
far more difficult and painful. 

Many of the older nuns are most indignant at what they 
consider an act of the basest treachery and sacrilege. I 
also am forbidden to have any more intercourse with the 
suspected sisters. Search has been made in every cell, and 
all the Lutheran books have been seized, while the strictest 
attendance is required at all the services. 

February 10, 1522. 

Sister Beatrice is dead, after a brief illness. The gentle, 
patient spirit is at rest. 

It seems difficult to think of joy associated with that 
subdued and timid heart, even in heaven. I can only 
think of her as at rest. 

One night after she died I had a dream, in which I 
seemed to see her entering into heaven. Robed and veiled 
in white, I saw her slowly ascending the way to the gates 
of the city. Her head and her eyes were cast on the 
ground, and she did not seem to dare to look up at the 
pearly gates, even to see if they were open or closed. 
But two angels, the gentlest spirits in heaven, came out and 
met her, and each taking one of her hands, led her silently 
inside, like a penitent child. And as she entered, the 
harps and songs within seemed to be hushed to music soft 
as the dreamy murmur of a summer noon. Still she did 
not look up, but passed through the golden streets with her 
hands trustingly folded in the hands of the angels, until 
she stood before the throne. Then from the throne came 
a voice, which said, “Beatrice, it is I; be not afraid!” 
And when she heard that voice, a quiet smile beamed 
over her face like a glory, and for the first time she raised 
her eyes; and sinking at His feet, murmured, “Home!” 
And it seemed to me as if that one word from the low, 
trembling voice vibrated through every harp in heaven; 
and from countless voices, ringing as happy as children’s, 
and tender as a mother’s, came back, in a tide of love and 
music, the words, “Welcome home.” 

This was only a dream ; but it is no dream that she is 

there 1 


i 


292 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


She said little in her illness. She did not suffer much. 
The feeble frame made little resistance to the low fever 
which attacked her. The words she spoke were mostly 
expressions of thankfulness for little services, or entreaties 
for forgiveness for any little pain she fancied she might 
have given. 

Aunt Agnes and I chiefly waited on her. She was uneasy 
if we were long away from her. Her thoughts often 
recurred to her girlhood in the old castle in the Tliuringian 
Forest; and she liked to hear me speak of Chriemhild and 
Ulrich, and their infant boy. One evening she called me 
toiler, and said, “Tell my sister Hermentrud, and my 
brother, I am sure they all meant kindly in sending me 
here; and it has been a good place for me, especially since 
you came. But tell Chriemhild and Ulrich,” she added, 
“if they have daughters, to remember plighted troth is a 
sacred thing, and let it not be lightly severed. Not that 
the sorrow has been evil for me; only I would not have 
another suffer. All, all has been good for me, and I so 
unworthy of all.” 

Then passing her thin hands over my head as I knelt 
beside her, she said, “Eva, you have been like a mother, 
a sister, a child—everything to me. Go back to your old 
home when I am gone. I like to think you will be there.” 

Then as if fearing she might have been ungrateful to 
Aunt Agnes, she asked for her, and said, “ I can never thank 
you for all you have done for me. The blessed Lord will 
remember it; for did he not say, ‘In that ye have done it 
unto the least.' ” 

And in the night, as I sat by her alone, she said, “ Eva, 
I have dreaded very much to die. I am so very weak in 
spirit, and dread everything. But I think God must make 
it easier for the feeble such as me. For although I do not 
feel any stronger, I am not afraid now. It must be be¬ 
cause he is holding me up.” 

She then asked me to sing; and with a faltering voice I 
sung, as well as I could, the hymn, Astant angelorum 
chori: 

High tlie angel-choirs are raising 
Heart and voice in harmony; 

The Creator King still praising, 

Whom in beauty there they see! 

Sweetest strains from soft harps stealing, 

Trumpets’ notes of triumph pealing; 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


293 


Radiant wings and white robes gleaming, 

Up the steps of glory streaming, 

Where the heavenly bells are ringing, 

Holy, holy, holy, singing, 

To the mighty Trinity! 

For all earthly care and sighing 
In that city cease to be! 

And two days after, in the gray of the autumn morning, 
she died. She fell asleep with the name of Jesus on 
her lips. 

It is strange how silent and empty the convent seems, 
only because that feeble voice is hushed and that poor 
shadowy form has passed away! 


February, 1522. 

Sister Beatrice has been laid in the convent churchyard 
with solemn, mournful dirges and masses, and stately 
ceremonies, which seemed to me little in harmony with her 
timid, shrinking nature, or the peace her spirit rests in 
now. 

The lowly mound in the churchyard, marked by no 
memorial but a wooden cross, accords better with her 
memory. The wind will rustle gently there next summer, 
through the grass; and this winter the robin will warble 
quietly in the old elm above. 

But I shall never see the grass clothe that earthly mound. 
It is decided that I am to leave the convent this week. 
Aunt Agnes and two of the young sisters have just left my 
cell, and all is planned. 

The petty persecutions against those they call the Luth¬ 
eran Sisters increase continually, while severer and more 
open proceedings are threatened. It is therefore decided 
that I am to make my escape at the first favorable oppor¬ 
tunity, find my way to Wittenberg, and then lay the case of 
the nine nuns before the Lutheran doctors and endeavor to 
provide for their rescue. 


February 20, 1522. 

At last the peasant’s dress in which I am to escape is 
in my cell, and this very night, when all is quiet, I am to 
creep out of the window of Catherine von Bora’s cell, into 
the convent garden. Aunt Agnes has been nervously eager 
about my going and has been busy secretly storing a little 


294 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


basket with provisions. But to-night when I went into 
her cell to wish her good-by, she quite broke down, and 
held me tight in her arms, as if she could never let me go, 
while her lips quivered, and tears rolled slowly over her 
thin, furrowed cheeks. “Eva, child,” she said, “who first 
taught me to love in spite of myself, and then taught me 
that God is love, and that he could make me, believing in 
Jesus, a happy, loving child again, how can I part with 
thee?” 

“You will join me again,” I said, “and your sister who 
loves you so dearly?” 

She shook her head and smiled through her tears, as she 
said: 

“ Poor helpless old woman that I am, what would you do 
with me in the busy life outside?” 

But her worst fear was for me, in my journey alone to 
Wittenberg, which seemed to her, who for forty years had 
never passed the convent walls, so long and perilous. Aunt' 
Agnes always thinks of me as a young girl, and imagines 
every one must think me beautiful, because love makes me 
so to her. She is sure they will take me for some princess 
in disguise. She forgets I am a quiet, sober-looking 
woman of seven-and-twenty, whom no one will wonder to 
see gravely plodding along the highway. 

But I almost made her promise to come to us at Witten¬ 
berg; and at last she reproached herself with distrusting 
God, and said she ought never to have feared that his 
angels would watch over me. 

Once more, then, the world opens before me; but I do 
not hope (and why should I wish?) that it should be more 
to me than this convent has been—a place where God will 
be with me and give me some little loving services to do 
for him. 

But my heart does yearn to embrace dear Aunt Cotta 
and Else once more, and little Thekla. And when Thekla 
marries, and Aunt and Uncle Cotta are left alone, I think 
they may want me, and Cousin Eva may grow old among 
Else’s children, and all the grandchildren, helping one and 
another a little, and missed a little wdien God takes me, 

But chiefly I long to be near Aunt Cotta, now that 
Fritz is in that terrible prison. She always said I com¬ 
forted her more than any one, and I think I may again. 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 
ELSE’s STORY. 


295 


October, 1521. 

Christopher has just returned, from a journey to 
Halle. They have dared once more to establish the sale of 
indulgences there, under the patronage of the young and 
self-indulgent Archbishop Albert of Mainz. Many of the 
students and the more thoughtful burghers are full of 
indignation at seeing the great re’d cross once more set up, 
and the heavenly pardons hawked through the streets for 
sale. This would not have been attempted, Gottfried feels 
sure, had not the enemy believed that Dr. Luther’s 
voice is silenced forever. Letters from him are, however, 
privately handed about among us here, and more than one 
of us know that he is in safe keeping not very far from us. 

November. 

Gottfried has just brought me the letter from Luther 
to the archbishop of Mainz; which will at least convince 
the indulgence-mongers that they have roused the sleeping 
lion. 

11c reminds the archbishop-elector that a conflagration 
has already been raised by the protest of one poor insignifi¬ 
cant monk against Tetzel; he warns him that the God who 
gave strength to that feeble human voice because it spoke 
his truth, “is living still, and will bring down the lofty 
cedars and the haughty Pharaohs, and can easily humble 
an elector of Mainz although there were four emperors 
supporting him.” He solemnly requires him to put down 
that avaricious sale of lying pardons at Mainz, or he will 
speedily publish a denunciation (which he has already 
written) against “The New School at Halle.” “For 
Luther,” he says “is not dead yet.” 

We are in great doubt how the archbishop will bear such 
a bold remonstrance. 


November 20. 

The remonstrance has done its work. The prince 
archbishop has written a humble and apologetic letter to 
Dr. Luther, and the indulgences are once more ban¬ 
ished from Halle. 

At Wittenberg, however, Dr. Luther’s letters do not 
at all compensate for his presence. There is great confu- 


296 


THE SGEONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


eion here, and not seldom there are encounters between 
the opposite parties in the streets. 

Almost all the monks in the Augustinian convent refused 
some weeks since to celebrate private masses or to adore 
the host. The gentle Dr. Melancthon and the other doc¬ 
tors at first remonstrated, but were at length themselves 
convinced, and appealed to the elector of Saxony himself 
to abolish these idolatrous ceremonies. We do not yet 
know how he will act. No public alterations have yet been 
made in the church services. 

But the great event which is agitating Wittenberg now 
is the abandonment of the cloister and the monastic life by 
thirteen of the Augustinian monks. The Pastor Feld- 
kirchen declared against priestly vows, and married some 
months since. But he was only a secular priest; and the 
opinions of all good men about the marriage of the priests 
of the various churches have long been undivided among us. 

Concerning the monks, however, it is different. For the 
priests to marry is merely a change of state; for the monks 
to abandon their vows is the destruction of their order, 
and of the monastic life altogether. 

Gottfried and I are fully persuaded they are right; and 
we honor greatly these men, who, disclaiming maintenance 
at other people’s expense, are content to place themselves 
among the students at the university. More especially, 
however, I honor the older or less educated brethren, who, 
relinquishing the consideration and idle plenty of the. 
cloister, set themselves to learn some humble trade. One 
of these has apprenticed himself to a carpenter; and as we 
passed his bench the other day, and watched him persever- 
ingly trying to train his unaccustomed fingers to handle 
the tools, Gottfried took off his cap and respectfully saluted 
him, sayiug: 

“ Yes, that is right. Christianity must begin again with 
the carpenter’s home at Nazareth.” 

In our family, however, opinions are divided. Our dear, 
anxious mother perplexes herself much as to what it will 
all lead to. It is true that Fritz’s second imprisonment 
has greatly shaken her faith in the monks; but she is dis¬ 
tressed at the unsettling tendencies of the age. To her it 
seems all destructive; and the only solution she can imagine 
for the difficulties of the times is, that these must be the 
latter days, and that when everything is pulled down, our 


TIIE SCIIONBERQ-GOTTA FAMILY. 


297 


Lord himself will come speedily to build up his kingdom 
in the right way. 

Deprived of the counsel of Fritz and her beloved Eva, 
and of Dr. Luther—in whom lately she had grown more to 
confide, although she always deprecates his impetuosity of 
language—she cannot make up her mind what to think 
about anything. She has an especial dread of the vehe¬ 
mence of the Archdeacon Carlstadt; and the mild Melanc- 
thon is too much like herself in disposition for her to lean 
on his judgment. 

Nevertheless, this morning, when I went to see them, I 
found her busily preparing some nourishing soup; which, 
when I asked her, she confessed was destined for the 
recusant monk who had become a carpenter. 

“Poor creatures,” she said apologetically, “they were 
accustomed to live well in the cloister, and I should not 
like them to feel the difference too suddenly.” 

Our grandmother is more than eighty now. Her form 
is still erect, although she seldom moves from her arm¬ 
chair; and her faculties seem little dimmed, except that 
she cannot attend to anything for any length of time. 
Sometimes I think old age to her is more like the tender 
days of early spring, than hard and frosty winter. Thekla 
says it seems as if this life were dawning softly for her into 
a better; or as if God were keeping her, like Moses, with 
undimmed eyes and strength unabated, till she may have 
the glimpse of the Promised Land, and see the deliverance 
she has so long waited for close at hand. 

With our children she is as great a favorite as she was 
with us, although she seems to have forgotten her old ways 
of finding fault; either because she feels less responsibility 
about the third generation, or because she sees all their 
little faults through a mellowed light. I notice, too, that 
she has fallen on quite a different vein of stories from those 
which used to rivet us. She seems to pass over the legend¬ 
ary lore of her early womanhood, back to the experiences 
of her own stirring youth and childhood. The mysteries 
of our grandfather’s history, which we vainly sought to 
penetrate, are all opened to Gretchen and the boys. The 
saiuts and hermits, whose adventures were our delight, are 
succeeded by stories of secret Hussite meetings to read the 
Scriptures among the forests and mountains of Bohemia; 
of wild retreats in caves, where whole familes lived for 


298 


THE SGHONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


months in concealment; of heartrending captures or mar¬ 
velous escapes. 

The heroes of my boys will be, not St. Christopher and 
St. George, but Hussite heretics! My dear mother often 
throws in a warning word to the boys, that those were evil 
times, and that people do not need to lead such wild lives 
now. But the text makes far more impression on the 
children than the commentary. 

Our grandmother’s own chief delight is still in Dr. 
Luther’s writings. I have lately read over to her and my 
father, I know not how many times, his letter from the 
Wartburg “to the little band of Christ at Wittenberg,” 
with his commentary accompanying it on the 37th Psalm— 
“Fret not thyself because of evil doers.” 

Our dear father is full of the brightest visions. He is 
persuaded that the whole world is being rapidly set right, 
and that it matters little, indeed, that his inventions could 
not be completed, since we are advancing at full speed into 
the Golden Age of humanity. 

Thus, from very opposite points and through very dif¬ 
ferent paths, he and my mother arrive at the same 
conclusion. 

We have heard from Thekla that Ulrich has visited Dr. 
Luther at the Wartburg, where he is residing. I am so 
glad to know where he is. It is always so difficult to me 
to think of people without knowing the scene around them. 
The figure itself seems to become shadowy in the vague, 
shadowy, unknown world around it. It is this which adds 
to my distress about Fritz. Now I can think of Dr. 
Luther sitting in that large room in which I waited for the 
elector with my embroidery, so many years ago—looking 
down the steep over the folded hills, reaching one behind 
another till the black pines and the green waving branches 
fade into lovely blue beneath the golden horizon. And at 
sunset I seem to see how the shadows creep over the green 
valleys where we used to play, and the lurid sun lights up 
the red stems of the pines. 

Or in the summer noon I see him sitting with his books 
—great folios, Greek, and Hebrew, and Latin—toiling at 
that translation of the Book of God, which is to be the 
blessing of all our people; while the warm sunbeams draw 
out the aromatic scent of the fir woods, and the breezes 
bring it in at the open window. 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


‘<£99 


Or at early morning I fancy him standing by the castle 
walls, looking down on the towers and distant roofs of 
Eisenach, while the bell of the great convent booms up to 
him the hour; and he thinks of the busy life beginning in 
the streets, where once he begged for bread at Aunt 
Ursula Cotta’s door. Dear Aunt Ursula, I wish she could 
have lived till now, to see the rich harvest an act of loving 
kindness will sometimes bring forth. 

Or at night, again, when all sounds are hushed except 
the murmur of the unseen stream in the valley below, and 
the sighing of the wind through the forest, and that great 
battle begins which he has to fight so often with the 
powers of darkness, and he tries to pray, and cannot lift 
liis heart to God, I picture him opening his casement, and 
looking down on forest, rock, and meadow, lying dim and 
lifeless beneath him, glance from these up to God, and 
reassure himself with the truth he delights to utter: 

“ God lives still!” feeling, as he gazes, that night is only 
hiding the sun, not quenching him, and watching till the 
gray of morning slowly steals up the sky and down into 
the forest. 

Yes, Dr. Melancthon has told us how he toils and how 
he suffers at the Wartburg, and how once he wrote, “Are 
my friends forgetting to pray for me, that the conflict is so 
terrible?” No; Gottfried remembers him always among 
our dearest names of kith and kindred. 

“But,” he said to-day, “we must leave the training of 
our chief to God.” 

Poor, tried, perplexed Saint Elizabeth! another royal 
heart is suffering at the Wartburg now, another saint is 
earning his crown through the cross at the old castle home; 
but not to be canonized in the papal calendar! 

December 21. 

The chapter of the Augustinian Order in Thuringia and 
Misnia has met here within this last month, to consider 
the question of the irrevocable nature of monastic vows. 
They have come to the decision that in Christ there is 
neither layman nor monk; that each is free to follow his 
conscience. 

Christmas Day, 1521. 

This has been a great day with us. 

Archdeacon Carlstadt announced, some little time since. 


300 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


that he intended, on the approaching Feast of the Circum¬ 
cision, to administer the holy sacrament to the laity under 
the two species of bread and wine. His right to do this 
having been disputed, he hastened the accomplishment of 
his purpose, lest it should be stopped by any prohibition 
from the court. 

To-day, after his sermon in the City Church, in which 
he spoke of the necessity of replacing the idolatrous sacri¬ 
fice of the mass by the holy supper, he went to the altar, 
and, after pronouncing the consecration of the elements 
in German, he turned toward the people, and said sol¬ 
emnly : 

“ Whosoever feels heavy laden with the burden of his 
sins, and hungers and thirsts for the grace of God, let him 
come and receive the body and blood of the Lord.” 

A brief silence followed his words, and then, to my 
amazement, before any one else stirred, I saw my 
timid, retiring mother slowly moving up the aisle, leading 
my father by the hand. Others followed; some with 
reverent, solemn demeanor, others perhaps with a little 
haste and over eagerness. And as the last had retired 
from the altar, the archdeacon, pronouncing the general 
absolution, added solemnly: 

“Go, and sin no more.” 

A few moments’ pause succeeded, and then, from many 
voices here and there, gradually swelling to a full chorus, 
arose the Agnus Dei: 

“Lamb of God, who takest away the sin of the world, 
have mercy on us. Give us peace.” 

We spent the Christmas, as usual, in my father’s house. 
Wondering, as I did, at my mother’s boldness, I did not 
like to speak to her on the subject; but, as we sat alone 
in the afternoon, while our dear father, Gottfried, Chris¬ 
topher, and the children, had gone to see the skating on 
the Elbe, she said to me: 

“Else, I could not help going. It seemed like the voice 
of our Lord himself saying to me, ‘ Thou art heavy laden 
—come!’ I never understood it all as I do now. It 
seemed as if I saiv the Gospel with my eyes, saw that the 
redemption is finished, and that now the feast is spread. 
I forgot to question whether I repented, or believed, or 
loved enough. I saw through the ages the body broken 
and the blood shed for me on Calvary; and now I saw the 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 301 

table spread, and heard the welcome, and I could not help 
taking your father’s hand and going up at once.” 

“Yes, dear mother, you set the whole congregation the 
best example,” I said. 

“I!” she exclaimed. “Do you mean that I went up 
before any one else? What! before all the holy men, and 
doctors, and the people in authority? Else, my child, 
what have I done? But I did not think of myself, or of 
any one else. I only seemed to hear his voice calling me; 
and what could I do but go? And, indeed, I cannot care 
now how it looked. Oh, Else,” she continued, “it is worth 
while to have the world thus agitated to restore this feast 
again to the church; worth while,” she added with a 
trembling voice, “even to have Fritz in prison for this. 
The-blessed Lord has sacrifioed himself for us, and we are 
living in the festival. He died for sinners. He spread the 
feast for the hungry and thirsty. Then those who feel 
thcli sins most must be not the last but the first to come. 
I see it all now. That holy sacrament is the Gospel for me.” 

February 10, 1522. 

The whole town is in commotion. 

Men have appeared among us who say that they are 
directly inspired from heaven; that study is quite unneces¬ 
sary—indeed, an idolatrous concession to the flesh and the 
letter; that it is wasting time and strength to translate the 
holy Scriptures, since, without their understanding a word 
of Greek or Hebrew, God has revealed its meaning to their 
hearts. 

These men come from Zwickau. Two of them are 
cloth-weavers; and one is Miinzer, who was a priest. They 
also declare themselves to be prophets. Nicholas Storck, 
a weaver, their leader, has chosen twelve apostles and 
seventy-two disciples, in imitation of our Lord. And one 
of them exclaimed, in awful tones, to-day in the streets: 

“Woe, woe to the impious governors of Christendom! 
Within less than seven years the world shall be made deso¬ 
late. The Turk will overrun the land. No sinner shall 
remain alive. God will purify the earth by blood, and all 
the priests will be put to death. The saints will reign. 
The day of the Lord is at hand. Woe! woe!” 

Opinions are divided throughout the university and the 
town about them. The elector himself says he would 


302 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


rather yield up his crown and go through the world a beg* 
gar than resist the voice of the LorcL Dr. Melancthon 
hesitates, and says we must try the spirits, whether they 
be of God. The Archdeacon Carlstaut is much impressed 
with them, and from his professorial chair even exhorts 
the students to abandon the vain pursuits of carnal wisdom, 
and to return to earn their bread, according to God’s ordi¬ 
nance, in the sweat of their brow. The master of the boys’ 
school called, from the open window of the schoolroom, 
to the citizens to take back their children. Not a few of 
the students are dispersing, and others are in an excitable 
state, ready for any tumult. The images have been vio¬ 
lently torn from one of the churches and burned. The 
monks of the convent of the Cordeliers have called the 
soldiers to their aid against a threatened attack. 

Gottfried and others are persuaded that these men of 
Zwickau are deluded enthusiasts. He says, “The spirit 
which undervalues the Word of God cannot be the sr irit 
of God.” 

But among the firmest opponents of these new doctrines 
is, to our surprise, our charitable mother. Her gentle, 
lowly spirit seems to shrink from them as with a heavenl}' 
instinct. She says “the Spirit of God humbles—does not 
puff up.” 

When it was reported to us the other day that Nicholas 
Storck had seen the angel Gabriel in the night, who flew 
toward him and said to him, “Ac for thee, thou shalt be 
seated on my throne!” the mother said: 

“ It is new language to the angel Gabriel, to speak of his 
throne. The angels in old times used to speak of the 
throne of God.” 

And when another said that it was time to sift the chaff 
from the wheat, and to form a church of none but saints, 
she said: 

“That would never suit me, then. I must stay outside 
in the church of redeemed sinners. And did not St. Paul 
himself say, as Dr, Luther told us, ‘sinners, of whom I am 
chief? ’ ” 

“But are you not afraid,” some one asked her, “of dis¬ 
honoring God by denying his messengers, if, after all, these 
hets should be sent from him?” 



“I think not,” she replied quietly. “Until the doctors 
are sure, I think I cannot displease my Saviour by keeping 
to the old message.” 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


303 


My father, however, is much excited about it; he sees 
no reason why there should not be prophets at Wittenberg 
as well as at Jerusalem; and in these wonderful days, he 
argues, what wonders can be too great to believe? 

I and many others long exceedingly for Dr. Luther. I 
believe, indeed, Gottfried is right, but it will be terrible to 
make a mistake; and Dr. Luther always seems to see 
straight to the heart of a thing at once, and storms the 
citadel, while Dr. Melancthon is going round and round, 
studying each point of the fortifications. 

Dr. Luther never wavers in opinion in his letters, but 
warns us most forcibly againt these delusions of Satan. 
But then peple say he has not seen or heard the “proph¬ 
ets.” One letter can be discussed and answered long 
before another comes, and the living eye and voice are 
much in such a conflict as this. 

What chief could lead an army on to battle by letters? 

February 26, 1522. 

Our dove of peace has come back to our home; our Eva! 
This evening when I went over with a message to my 
mother, to my amazement I saw her sitting with her hand 
in my father’s, quietly reading to him the twenty-third 
Psalm, while my grandmother sat listening, and my mother 
was contentedly knitting beside them. 

It seemed as if she had scarcely been absent a day, so 
quietly had she glided into her old place. It seemed so 
natural, and yet so like a dream, that the sense of wonder 
passed from me as it does in dreams, and I went up to her 
and kissed her forehead. 

“Dear Cousin Else, is it you?” she said. “I intended 
to have come to you the first thing to-morrow.” 

The dear, peaceful, musical voice, what a calm it shed 
over the home again! 

“You see you have all left Aunt Cotta,” she said, with 
a slight tremulousness in her tone, “so I am come back to 
be with her always, if she will let me.” 

There were never any protestations of affection between 
my mother and Eva, they understood each other so com¬ 
pletely. 

February 28. 

Yes, it is no dream. Eva has left the convent, and is 
one of us once more. Now that she has resumed all her 


304 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


old ways, I wonder more than ever how we could have got 
on without her. She speaks as quietly of her escape from 
the convent, and her lonely journey across the country, as if 
it were the easiest and most everyday occurrence. She says 
every one seemed anxious to help her and take care of her. 

She is very little changed. Hers was not a face to 
change. The old guileless expression is on her lips—the 
same trustful, truthful light in her dark soft eyes; the 
calm, peaceful brow, that always reminded one of a sunny, 
cloudless sky, is calm and bright still; and around it the 
golden hair, not yet grown from its conventual cutting, 
clusters in little curls, which remind me of her first days 
with us at Eisenach. Only all the character of the face 
seems deepened, I cannot say shadowed, but penetrated 
with that kind of look which I fancy must always distin¬ 
guish the faces of the saints above from those of the angels, 
those who have suffered from those who have only sympa¬ 
thized; that deep, tender, patient, trusting, human look, 
which is stamped on those who have passed to the heavenly, 
rapturous “Thy will be done,” through the agony of “Not 
my will, but Thine.” 

At first Gretchen met her with the kind of reverent face 
she has at church; and she asked me afterward, “Is that 
really the Cousin Eva in the picture?” But now there is 
the most familiar intimacy between them, and Gretchen 
confidingly and elaborately expounds to Cousin Eva all her 
most secret plans and delights. The boys, also, have a 
most unusual value for her good opinion, and appear to 
think her judgment beyond that of ordinary women; for 
yesterday little Fritz was eagerly explaining to her the vir¬ 
tues of a new bow that had been given him, formed in the 
English fashion. 

She is very anxious to set nine young nuns, who have 
embraced the Lutheran doctrine, free from Nimptschen. 
Gottfried thinks it very difficult, but by no means imprac¬ 
ticable in time. 

Meanwhile, what a stormy world our dove has returned 
to! the university well-nigh disorganized; the town in 
commotion; and no German Bible yet in any one’s hands, 
by which, as Gottfried says, the claims of these new proph¬ 
ets might be tested. 

Yet it does not seem to depress Eva. She says it seems 
to her like coming out of the ark into a new world; and, 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 305 

no doubt, Noah did not find everything laid out in order 
for him. She is quite on my mother’s side about the 
prophets. She says, the apostles preached not themselves, 
but Christ Jesus the Lord. If the Zwickau prophets 
preach Him, they preach nothing new; and if they preach 
themselves, neither God nor the angel Gabriel gave them 
that message. 

Our great sorrow is Fritz’s continued imprisonment. 
At first we felt sure he would escape, but every month 
lessens our hopes, until we scarcely dare speak of him 
except in our prayers. Yet daily, together with his 
deliverance, Gottfried and I pray for the return of Dr. 
Luther, and for the prosperous completion of his transla¬ 
tion of the German Bible, which Gottfried believes will be 
the greatest boon Dr. Luther has given, or can ever give, 
to the German people, and through them to Christendom. 


PAKT XVIII. 

ELSE * S STORY. 

Saturday, March 8, 1522. 

The great warm heart is beating among us once more. 

Dr. Luther is once more dwelling quietly in the Augus- 
tinian cloister, which he left for Worms a year ago. What 
changes since then! He left us amid our tears and vain 
entreaties not to trust his precious life to the treacherous 
safe-conduct which had entrapped John Huss to the stake. 

He returns unscathed and triumphant—the defender of 
the good cause before emperor, prelates, and princes, the 
hero of our German people. 

He left citizens and students for the most part trem¬ 
bling at the daring of his words and deeds. 

He returns to find students and burghers impetuously 
and blindly rushing on in the track he opened, beyond his 
judgment and convictions. 

He left, the foremost in the attack, timidly followed as 
he hurried forward, braving death alone. 

He returns to recall the scattered forces, dispersed and 
divided in wild and impetuous pursuit. 

Will, then, his voice be as powerful to recall and reor¬ 
ganize as it was to urge forward? 

Fie wrote to the elector, on his way from the Wartburg, 



306 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY\ 


disclaiming his protection—declaring that he returned ta 
the flock God had committed to him at Wittenberg, called 
and constrained by God himself, and under mightier pro¬ 
tection than that of an elector! The sword, he said, could 
not defend the truth. The mightiest are those whose 
faith is mightiest. Relying on his master, Christ, and on 
, him alone, he came. 

Gottfried says it is fancy, but already it seems to me I 
see a difference in the town—less bold, loud talking, than 
the day before yesterday; as in a family of eager, noisy 
boys, whose father is among them again. But after to¬ 
morrow, we shall be able to judge better. He is to preach 
in the city pulpit. 


Monday, March 10, 1522. 

We have heard him preach once more. Thank God, 
those days in the wilderness, as he called it, have*surely 
not been lost days for Dr. Luther. 

As he stood again in the pulpit, many among the 
crowded congregation could not refrain from shedding tears 
of joy. In that familiar form, and truthful, earnest face, 
we saw the man who had stood unmoved before the em¬ 
peror and all the great ones of the empire—alone, uphold¬ 
ing the truth of God. 

Many of us saw, moreover, with even deeper emotion, 
the sufferer who, during those last ten months, had stood 
before an enemy more terrible than pope or emperor, in 
the solitude of the Wartburg; and while his own heart and 
flesh were often well-nigh failing in the conflict, had never 
failed to carry on the struggle bravely and triumphantly 
for us his flock; sending masterly replies to the University 
of Paris; smiting the lying traffic with indulgences, by one 
noble remonstrance, from the trembling hands of the arch¬ 
bishop of Mainz; writing letter after letter of consolation 
or fatherly counsel to the little flock of Christ at Witten¬ 
berg; and, through all, toiling at that translation of the 
Word of God, which is the great hope of our country. 

But older, tenderer, more familiar associations, mastered 
all the others when we heard his voice again—the faithful 
voice that had warned and comforted us so long in public 
and in private. To others, Dr. Luther might be the hero 
of Worms, the teacher of Germany, the St. George who 
had smitten the dragon of falsehood; to us he was the true, 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 307 

affectionate pastor; and many of ns, I believe, heard little 
of the first words of his sermon, for the mere joy of hear¬ 
ing his voice again, as the clear, deep tones vibrated 
through the silent church. 

He began with commending our faith. He said we had 
made much progress during his absence. But he went on 
to say, “We must have more than faith—we must have 
love. If a man with a sword in his hand happens to be 
alone, it matters little whether he keep it in the scabbard 
or not; but if he is in the midst of a crowd, he must take 
care to hold it so as not to hurt any one. 

“A mother begins with giving her infant milk. Would 
it live if she gave it first meat and wine? 

“But thou, my friend, hast, perhaps, had enough of 
milk. It may be well for thee. Yet let thy weaker, 
younger brother take it. The time was when thou also 
couldst have taken nothing else. 

“ See the sun! It brings us two things—light and heat. 
The rays of light beam directly on us. No king is power¬ 
ful enough to intercept those keen, direct, swift rays. But 
heat is radiated back to us from every side. Thus, like 
the light, faith should ever be direct and inflexible; but love, 
like the heat, should radiate on all sides, and meekly adapt 
itself to the wants of all. 

“The abolition of the mass, you say,” he continued, “is 
according to Scripture. I agree with you, but in abolishing 
it, what regard had you for order and decency? You 
should have offered fervent prayers to God, public authority 
should have been applied to, and every one would have seen 
then that the thing came from God. 

“The mass is a bad thing; God is its enemy; it ought 
to be abolished; and I would that throughout the whole 
world it were superseded by the Supper of the Gospel. 
But let none tear any one away from it with violence. The 
matter ought to be committed to God. It is his Word that 
must act, and not we. And wherefore, do you say? Be¬ 
cause I do not hold the hearts of men in my hand as the 
potter holds the clay in his. Our work is to speak; God 
will act. Let us preach. The rest belongs to him. If I 
employ force, what do I gain? Changes in demeanor, out¬ 
ward shows, grimaces, shams, hypocrisies. But what be¬ 
comes of sincerity of heart, of faith, of Christian love? 
All is wanting where these are wanting; and for the rest I 
would not give the stalk of a pear. 


308 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“What we want is the heart; and to win that, we most 
preach the Gospel. Then the word will drop to-day into 
one heart, to-morrow into another, and will so work that 
each will forsake the mass. God effects more than you 
and I and the whole world combined could attempt. He 
secures the heart; and when that is won, all is won. 

“ I say not this in order to re-establish the mass. Since 
it has been put down, in God’s name let it remain so. But 
ought it to have been put down in the way it has been? 
St. Paul, on arriving at the great city of Athens, found 
altars there erected to false gods. He passed from one to 
another, made his own reflections on all, but touched none. 
But he returned peaceably to the Forum, and declared to 
the people that all those gods were mere idols. This 
declaration laid hold on the hearts of some, and the idols 
fell without Paul’s touching them. I would preach, I 
would speak, I would write, but I would lay constraint on 
no one; for faith is a voluntary thing. See what I have 
done! I rose in opposition to the pope, to indulgences, and 
the papists; but I did so without tumult or violence. I 
pressed before all things the Word of God; I preached, I 
wrote; I did nothing else. And while I was asleep, or 
seated at table in conversation with Amsdorf and Melanc- 
thon, over our Wittenberg beer, that Word which I had 
been preaching was working, and subverted the popedom 
as never before it was damaged by assault of prince or 
emperor. I did nothing; all was done by the Word. Had 
I sought to appeal to force, Germany might by this time 
have been steeped in blood. And what would have been 
the result? Ruin and desolation of soul and body. I 
therefore kept myself quiet, and left the Word to force its 
own way through the world. Know you what the devil 
thinks when he sees people employ violence in disseminat¬ 
ing the Gospel among men? Seated with his arms crossed 
behind hell-fire, Satan says, with a malignant look and 
hideous leer, ‘Ah, but these fools are wise men, indeed, to 
do my work for me!’ But when he sees the Word go forth 
and engage alone on the field of battle, then he feels ill at 
ease; his knees smite against each other, he shudders and 
swoons away with terror.” 

Quietly and. reverently, not with loud debatings and 
noisy protestations of what they would do next, the con¬ 
gregation dispersed. 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


309 


The words of forbearance came with such weight from 
that daring, fearless heart, which has braved the wrath of 
popedom and empire alone for God, and still braves excom¬ 
munication and ban! 

Wednesday, March 11. 

Yesterday again Dr. Luther preached. He earnestly 
warned us against the irreverent participation in the holy 
sacrament. “It is not the external eating which makes 
the Christian,” he said, “it is the internal and spiritual 
eating, which is the work of faith, and without which all 
external things are mere empty shows and vain grimaces. 
Now this faith consists in firmly believing that Jesus 
Christ is the Son of God; that having charged himself 
with our sins and our iniquities, and having borne them 
on the cross, he is himself the sole, the all-sufficient expia¬ 
tion; that he ever appears before God; that he reconciles 
us to the Father, and that he has given us the sacrament 
of his body in order to strengthen our faith in that un¬ 
utterable mercy. If I believe these things, God is my 
defender; with him on my side, I brave sin, death, hell, 
and demons; they can do me no harm, nor even touch a 
hair of my head. This spiritual bread is the consolation 
of the afflicted, the cure of the sick, the life of the dying, 
the food of the hungry, the treasure of the poor. He who 
is not grieved by his sins, ought not, then, to approach 
this altar. What would he do there? Ah, did our con¬ 
science accuse us, did our heart feel crushed at the 
thought of our shortcomings, we could not then lightly 
approach the holy sacrament.” 

There were more among us than the monk Gabriel- 
Didymus (a few days since one of the most devoted of the 
violent faction, now sober and brought to his right mind), 
that could say as we listened, “Verily it is as the voice of 
an angel.” 

But, thank God, it is not the voice of an angel, but a 
human voice vibrating to every feeling of our hearts—the 
voice of our own true, outspoken Martin Luther, who will, 
we trust, now remain with us to build up with the same 
word which has already cleared away so much. 

And yet I cannot help feeling as if his absence had done 
its work for us as well as his return. If the hands of vio¬ 
lence can be arrested now, I cannot but rejoice they have 
done just as much as they have* 


310 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Now, let Dr. Luther’s principle stand. Abolish nothing 
that is not directly prohibited by the holy Scriptures. 

March 30. 

Dr. Luther’s eight discourses are finished, and quiet 
is restored to Wittenberg. The students resume their 
studies, the boys return to school; each begins with a lowly 
heart once more the work of his calling. 

No one has been punished. Luther would not have 
force employed either against the superstitious or the un¬ 
believing innovators. “Liberty,” he says, “is of the 
essence of faith.” 

With his tender regard for the sufferings of others we 
do not wonder so much at this. 

But we all wonder far more at the gentleness of his 
words. They say the bravest soldiers make the best nurses 
of their wounded comrades. Luther’s hand seems to have 
laid aside the battle-axe, and coming among his sick and 
wounded and perplexed people here, he ministers to them 
gently as the kindest woman—us our own mother could, 
who is herself won over to love and revere him with all her 
heart. 

Not a bitter word has escaped him, although the cause 
these disorders are risking is the cause for which he has 
risked his life. 

And there are no more tumults in the streets. The 
frightened Cordelier monks may carry on their ceremonies 
without terror, or the aid of soldiery. All the warlike 
spirits are turned once more from raging against small 
external things, to the great battle beginning everywhere 
against bondage and superstition. 

Dr. Luther himself has engaged Dr. Melancthon’s assist¬ 
ance in correcting and perfecting the translation of the 
New Testament he accomplished in the solitude of the 
Wartburg. Their friendship seems closer than ever. 

Christopher’s press is in the fullest activity, and all 
seem full of happy, orderly occupation again. 

Sometimes I tremble when I think how much we seem 
to depend on Dr. Luther, lest we should make an idol of 
him; but Thekla, who is among us again, said to me when 
I expressed this fear: 

t “Ah, dear Else, it is the old superstition. When God 
gives us a glorious summer and good harvest, are we to 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


311 


receive it coldly and enjoy it tremblingly, lest be should 
send us a bad season next year to prevent our being too 
happy? If he sends the dark days will he not also give us 
a lamp for our feet through them?” 

And even our gentle mother said: 

“I think if God gives us a staff, Else, he intends us to 
lean on it.” 

i “And when he takes it away,” said Eva, “I think he is 
sure to give us his own hand instead. I think what grieves 
God is, when we use his gifts for what he did not intend 
them to be; as if, for instance, we were to plant our staff, 
instead of leaning on it; or to set it up as an image and 
adore it, instead of resting on it and adoring God. Then , 
I suppose, we might have to learn that our idol was not in 
itself a support, or a living thing at all, but only a piece 
of lifeless wood.” 

“Yes,” said Thekla decidedly, “when God gives us 
friends, I believe he means us to love them as much as we 
can. And when he gives us happiness, I am sure he 
means us to enjoy it as much as we can. And when 
he gives soldiers a good general, he means them to 
trust and follow him. And when he gives us back 
Dr. Luther and Cousin Eva,” she added, drawing Eva’s 
hand from her work and covering it with kisses, “I 
am quite sure he means us to welcome them with all our 
hearts, and feel that we can never make enough of them. 
Oh Else,” she added, smiling, “you will never, I am afraid, 
be set quite free from the old fetters. Every now and then 
we shall hear them clanking about you, like the chains of 
the family ghost of the Gersdorfs. You will never quite 
believe, dear good sister, that God is not better pleased 
with you when you are sad than when you are happy.” 

“He is often nearest,” said Eva softly, “when we are 
sad.” And Thekla’s lip quivered and her eyes filled with 
tears as she replied in a different tone: 

“I think I know that too, Cousin Eva.” 

Poor child, she has often had to prove it. Her heart 
must often ache when she thinks of the perilous position of 
Bertrand de Crequi among his hostile kindred in Flapders. 
And it is Therefore she cannot bear a shadow of a doubt to 
be thrown on the certainty of their reunion. 

The evangelical doctrine is enthusiastically welcomed at 
Antwerp and other cities of the Low Countries. But, on 


312 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


the other hand, the civil and ecclesiastical authorities 
oppose it vehemently, and threaten persecution. 

May, 1522. 

Dr. Luther has had an interview with Mark Stiibner, 
the schoolmaster Cellarius, and others of the Zwickau 
prophets and their disciples. He told them plainly that he 
believed their violent, self-willed, fanatical proceedings 
were suggested, not by the Holy Spirit of love and truth, 
but by the spirit of lies and malice. Yet be is said to have 
listened to them with quietness. Cellarius, they say, 
foamed and gnashed his teeth with rage, but Stiibner 
showed more self-restraint. 

However, the prophets have all left Wittenberg, and 
quiet is restored. 

A calm has come down on the place, and on every home 
in it—the calm of order and subjection instead of the rest¬ 
lessness of self-will. And all has been accomplished through 
the presence and the words of the man whom God has sent 
to be our leader, and whom we acknowledge. Not one act 
of violence has been done since he came. He would suffer 
no contraint either on the consciences of the disciples of 
the “prophets,” or on those of the old superstition. He 
relies, as we all do, on the etfect of the translation of the 
Bible into German, which is now quietly and rapidly 
advancing. 

Every week the doctors meet in the Augustinian con¬ 
vent, now all but empty, to examine the work done, and 
to consult about difficult passages. When once this is 
accomplished, they believe God will speak through those 
divine pages direct to all men’s hearts, and preachers and 
doctors may retire to their lowly subordinate places. 

ATLANTIS’ STORY. 

Chriemhild and I have always been the least clever of 
the family, and with much less that is distinctive about us. 
Indeed, I do not think there is anything particularly char¬ 
acteristic about us, except our being twins. Thekla says 
we are pure Saxons, and have neither of us anything of the 
impetuous Czech or Bohemian blood; which may so far be 
good for me, because Conrad has not a little of the vehe¬ 
ment Swiss character in him. Every one always spoke of 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 313 

Chriemhild and me, and thought of ns together; and 
when they called us the beauties of the family, I think 
they chiefly meant that we looked pleasant together by 
contrast. Thekla says God sends the flowers into the 
world as twins; contrasting with each other just as we did, 
the dark-eyed violets with the fair primroses, golden gorse, 
and purple heather. Chriemhild she used sometimes to 
call sister Primrose, and me sister Violet. Chriemhild, 
however, is beautiful by herself without me, so tall, and 
fair, and placid, and commanding-looking, with her large 
gray eyes, her calm broad brow, and her erect full figure, 
which always made her gentle manner seem condescending 
like a queen’s. But I am nothing without Chriemhild; 
only people used to like to see my small light figure, and 
my black eyes and hair, beside hers. 

I wonder what Conrad Winkelried’s people will think of 
me in that far-off mountainous Switzerland whither he is to 
take me! He is sure they will all love me; but how can I 
tell? Sometimes my heart flutters a great deal to think 
of leaving home, and Else and the dear mother, and all. 
It is true Chriemhild seemed to find it quite natural when 
the time came, but she is so different. Every one was sure 
to be pleased with Chriemhild. 

And I am so accustomed to love and kindness. They all 
know me so well here, and how much less clever I am 
than the rest, that they all bear with me tenderly. Even 
Thekla, who is often a little vehement, is always gentle 
with me, although she may laugh a little sometimes when 
I say anything more foolish than usual. I am so often 
making discoveries of things that every one else knew long 
since. I do not think I am so much afraid on my own 
account, because I have so little right to expect anything, 
and always get so much more than I deserve from our dear 
heavenly Father and from every one. Only on Conrad’s 
account I should like to be a little wiser, because he knows 
so many languages, and is so very clever. When I spoke 
to Else about it once, she smiled and said she had the same 
kind of fears once, but if we ask him, God will always give 
us just the wisdom we want day by day. It is part of the 
“ daily bread,” she said. And certainly Else is not learned, 
and yet every one loves her, and she does so much good in 
a quiet way. But then, although she is not learned, she 
seems to me wise in little things. And she used to write 


814 


THE SGEONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


a Chronicle when she was younger than I am. She told 
me so, although I have never seen it. I have been think¬ 
ing that perhaps it is writing the Chronicle that has made 
her wise, and therefore I intend to try to write one. But 
as at present I can think of nothing to say of my own, I 
will begin by copying a narrative Conrad lent me to read a 
few days since, written by a young Swiss student, a friend 
of his, who has just come to Wittenberg from St. Gall, 
where his family live. His name is Johann Kessler, and 
Conrad thinks him very good and diligent. 

“ Copy of Johann Kessler'’s Narrative. 

“As we were journeying toward Wittenberg to study the 
holy Scriptures, at Jena we encountered a fearful tempest, 
and after many inquiries in the town for an inn where we 
might pass the night, we could find none, either by seeking 
or asking; no one would give us a night’s lodging. For it 
was carnival time, when people have little care for pilgrims 
had strangers. So we went forth again from the town, to 
try if we could find a village where we might rest for the 
night. 

“At the gate, however, a respectable-looking man met 
us, and spoke kindly to us, and asked whither we journeyed 
so late at night, since in no direction could we reach house 
or inn where we could find shelter before dark night set in. 
It was, moreover, a road easy to lose; he counseled us, 
therefore, to remain all night where we were. 

“We answered: 

“ ‘Dear father, we have been at all the inns, and they 
sent us from one to another; everywhere they refused us 
lodging; we have, therefore, no choice but to journey 
further. ’ 

“ Then he asked if we had also inquired at the sign of 
the Black Bear. 

“Then we said: 

“ ‘We have not seen it. Friend, where is it?’ 

“Then he led us a little out of the town. And when 
we saw the Black Bear, lo, whereas all the other landlords 
and refused us shelter the landlord there came himself out 
at the gate to receive us, bade us welcome, and led us into 
the room. 

“There we found a man sitting alone at'the table, and 
before him lay a little book. He greeted us kindly, asked 


THE 8CH0NBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


315 


ns to draw near, and to place ourselves by him at the table. 
For our shoes (may we be excused for writing it) were so 
covered with mud and dirt, that we were ashamed to enter 
boldly into the chamber, and had seated ourselves on a 
little bench in a corner near the. door. 

“Then he asked us to drink, which we could not refuse. 
When we saw how cordial and friendly he was, we seated 
ourselves near him at his table as he had asked us, and 
ordered wine that we might ask him to drink in return. 
We thought nothing else but that he was a trooper, as he 
sat there, according to the custom of the country, in liosen 
and tunic, without armor, a sword by his side, his right 
hand on the pommel of the sword, his left grasping its hilt. 
His eyes were black and deep, flashing and beaming like 
a star, so that they could not well be looked at. 

“Soon he began to ask what was our native country. 
But he himself replied: 

“ ‘You are Switzers. From what part of Switzerland?’ 

“We answered: 

“ ‘From St. Gall.’ 

“ Then he said: 

“ ‘If you are going hence to Wittenberg, as I hear, yon 
will find good fellow-countrymen there, namely, Dr. Hier¬ 
onymus Schurf, and his brother, Dr. Augustin.’ 

“ We said: 

“ ‘We have letters to them.’ And then we inquired: 

“ ‘Sir, can you inform us if Martin Luther is now at 
Wittenberg, or if not where he is?’ 

“ He said: 

“‘I have reliable information that Luther is not now at 
Wittenberg. He will, however, soon be there. Philip 
Melancthon is there now; he teaches Greek, and others 
teach Hebrew. I counsel you earnestly to study both; for 
both are necessary in order to understand the holy Scrip¬ 
tures. ’ 

“ We said: 

“ ‘God be praised! For if God spare our lives we will 
not depart till we see and hear that man; since on his 
account have we undertaken this journey, because we 
understood that he purposes to abolish the priesthood, 
together with the mass, as an unfounded worship. For as 
we have from our youth been destined by our parents to 
be priests, we would know what kind of instruction he will 


316 TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 

give ns, and on what authority he seeks to effect such an 
object.’ 

“After these words, he asked: 

“ ‘Where have you studied hitherto?’ 

“Answer, ‘At Basel.’ 

“Then said he, ‘How goes it at Basel? Is Erasmus of 
Rotterdam still there, and what is he doing?’ 

“‘Sir,’ said we, ‘we know not that things are going on 
there otherwise than well. Also, Erasmus is there, but 
what he is occupied with is unknown to any one, for he 
keeps himself very quiet, and in great seclusion.’ 

“ This discourse seemed to us very strange in the trooper; 
that he should know how to speak of both the Schurfs, of 
Philip, and Erasmus, and also of the study of Hebrew and 
Greek. 

“ Moreover he now and then used Latin words, so that 
we deemed he must be more than a common trooper. 

“‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘what do they think in Switzerland 
of Luther?’ 

“‘Sir, there, as elsewhere, there are various opinions. 
Many cannot enough exalt him, and praise God that He 
has made His truth plain through him, and laid error 
bare; many, on the other hand, and among these more 
especially the clergy, condemn him as a reprobate heretic.’ 

“Then he said, ‘I can easily believe it is the clergy that 
speak thus.’ 

With such conversation we grew quite confidential, so 
that my companion took up the little book that lay before 
him, and looked at it. It was a Hebrew Psalter. Then 
he laid it quickly down again, and the trooper drew it to 
himself. And my companion said, ‘I would give a finger 
from my hand to understand that language.’ 

“He answered, ‘You will soon comprehend it, if you are 
diligent; I also desire to understand it better, and practise 
myself daily in it.’ 

“ Meantime the day declined, and it became quite dark, 
when the host came to the table. 

“ When he understood our fervent desire and longing to 
see Martin Luther, he said: 

“‘Good friends, if you had been here two days ago, you 
would have had your wish, for he sat here at table, and’ 
(pointing with his finger) ‘in that place.’ 

“ It vexed and fretted us much that we should have lin- 


THE SCRONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


317 


gered on the way; and we vented onr anger on the muddy 
and wretched roads that had delayed us. 

“ But we added: 

“‘It rejoices us, however, to sit in the house and at the 
table where he sat. ’ 

“Thereat the host laughed, and went out at the door. 

“After a little while, he called me to come to him at the 
door of the chamber. I was alarmed, fearing I had done 
something unsuitable, or that I had unwittingly given 
some offense. But the host said to me: 

“‘Since I perceive that you So much wish to see and hear 
Luther, that is he who is sitting with you.’ 

“I thought he was jesting, and said: 

“‘Ah, Sir Host, you would befool me and my wishes 
with a false image of Luther!’ 

“ He answered: 

“‘It is certainly he. But do not seem as if you knew 
this. ’ 

“ I could not believe it; but I went back into the room, and 
longed to tell my companion what the host had disclosed 
to me. At last I turned to him, and whispered softly: 

“‘The host has told me that is Luther.’ 

“ He, like me, could not at once believe it, and said: 

“‘He said, perhaps, it was Hutten, and thou hast mis¬ 
understood him.’ 

“And because the stranger’s bearing and military dress 
suited Hutten better than Luther, I suffered myself to be 
persuaded he had said, ‘It is Hutten,’ since the two names 
had a somewhat similar sound. What I said further, 
therefore, was on the supposition that I was conversing 
with Huldrich ab Hutten, the knight. 

“ While this was going on, two merchants arrived, who 
intended also to remain the night; and after they had 
taken off their outer coats and their spurs, one laid down 
beside him an unbound book. 

“ Then he the host had (as I thought) called Martin 
Luther, asked what the book was. 

“‘It is Dr. Martin Luther’s Exposition of certain Gos¬ 
pels and Epistles, just published. Have you not yet seen 
it?’ 

“Said Martin, ‘It will soon be sent to me.’ 

“Then said the host: 

“‘Place yourselves at table; we will eat.’ 


318 


THE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“But we besought him to excuse us, and give us a place 
apart. But he said: 

“‘Good friends, seat yourselves at the table. I will see 
that you are welcome. ’ 

“When Martin heard that, he said: 
i “‘Come, come, I will settle the score with the host by 
and by.’ 

“During the meal, Martin said many pious and friendly 
words, so that the merchants and we were dumb before 
him, and heeded his discourse far more than our food. 
Among other things, he complained, with a sigh, how the 
princes and nobles were gathered at the Diet at Nurnberg 
on account of God’s word, many difficult matters, and the 
oppression of the German nation, and yet seemed to have 
no purpose but to bring about better times by means of 
tourneys, sleigh-rides, and all kinds of vain, courtly pleas¬ 
ures; whereas the fear of God and Christian prayer would 
accomplish so much more. 

“‘Yet these,’ said he sadly, ‘are our Christian princes!’ 

“Further, he said, ‘We must hope that the evangelical 
truth will bring forth better fruit in our children and suc¬ 
cessors—who will never have been poisoned by papal error, 
but will be planted in the pure truth and word of God— 
than in their parents, in whom these errors are so deeply 
rooted that they are hard to eradicate.’ 

“ After this, the merchants gave their opinion, and the 
elder of them said: 

“‘I am a simple, unlearned layman, and have no special 
understanding of these matters; but as I look at the thing, 
I say, Luther must either be an angel from heaven or a 
devil from hell. I would gladly give ten florins to be con¬ 
fessed by him, for I believe he could and would enlighten 
my conscience.’ 

“ Meantime the host came secretly to us and said: 

“‘Martin has paid for your supper.’ 

“This pleased us much, not on account of the gold or 
the meal, but because that man had made us his guests. 

“After supper, the merchants rose and went into the 
stable to look after their horses. Meanwhile Martin 
remained in the room with us, and we thanked him for his 
kindness and generosity, and ventured to say we took him 
to be Huldrich ab Hutten. But he said: 

“‘lam not he.’ 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 319 

“ Thereon the host came, and Martin said: 

“‘I have to-night become a nobleman, for these Switzers 
take me for Huldrich ab Hutten.’ 

“And then he laughed at the jest, and said: 

“‘They take me for Hutten, and you take me for 
Luther. Soon I shall become Markolfus the clown.’ 

“And after this he took a tall beer-glass, and said, 
according to the custom of the country: 

“‘Switzers, drink after me a friendly draught to each 
other’s welfare.’ 

“ But as I was about to take the glass from him, he 
changed it, and ordered, instead, a glass of wine, and said: 

“‘Beer is a strange and unwonted beverage to you. 
Drink the wine.’ 

“Thereupon he stood up, threw his mantle over his 
shoulder, and took leave. He offered us his hand, and 
said: 

“‘When you come to Wittenberg, greet Dr. Hieronymus 
Schurf from me.’ 

“ We said: 

“‘Gladly would we do that, but what shall we call you, 
that he may understand the greeting?’ 

“He said: 

“‘Say nothing more than, He who is coming sends you 
greeting. He will at once understand the words.’ 

“ Thus he took leave of us, and retired to rest. 

“Afterward the merchants returned into the room, and 
desired the host to bring them more to drink, while they 
had much talk with him as to who this guest really was. 

“The. host confessed he took him to be Luther; where¬ 
upon they were soon persuaded, and regretted that they had 
spoken so unbecomingly before him, and said they would 
rise early on the following'morning, before he rode off, 
and beg him not to be angry with them, or to think evil of 
them, since they had not known who he was. 

“ This happened as they wished, and they found him the 
next morning in the stable. 

“But Martin said, ‘You said last night at supper you 
would gladly give ten florins to confess to Luther. When 
you confess yourselves to him you will know whether I am 
Martin Luther or not.’ 

“Further than this he did not declare who he was, but 
soon afterward mounted and rode off to Wittenberg. 


320 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


“On the same day we came to Naumburg, and as we 
entered a village (it lies under a mountain, and I think the 
mountain is called Orlamunde, and the village Nasshausen), 
a stream was flowing through it which was swollen by the 
rain of the previous day, and had carried away part of the 
bridge, so that no one could ride over it. In the same 
village we lodged for the night, and it happened that we 
again found in the inn the two merchants; so they, for 
Luther’s sake, insisted on making us their guests at this 
inn. 

“ On the Saturday after, the day before the first Sunday 
in Lent, we went to Dr. Hieronymus Schurf to deliver our 
letters of introduction. When we were called into the 
room, lo and behold! there we found the trooper Martin 
as before at Jena, and with him were Philip Melancthon, 
Justus Jonas, Nicolaus Amsdorf, and Dr. Augustin Schurf, 
who w r ere relating to him what had happened at Witten¬ 
berg during his absence. He greeted us, and laughing, 
pointed with his finger and said, ‘This is Philip Melanc¬ 
thon, of whom I spoke to you.’ ” 

I have copied this to begin to improve myself, that I 
may be a better companion for Conrad, and also because in 
after years I think we shall prize anything which shows 
how our Martin Luther won the hearts of strangers, and 
how, when returning to Wittenberg an excommunicated 
and outlawed man, with all the care of the evangelical doc¬ 
trine on him, he had a heart at leisure for little acts of 
kindness and words of faithful counsel. 

What a blessing it is for me, who can understand nothing 
of the “Theologia Teutsch” even in German, and never 
could have learned Latin like Eva, that Dr. Luther’s 
sermons are so plain to me, great and learned as he is. 
Chriemhild and I always understood them, and although 
we never could talk much to others, at night in our bed¬ 
room we used to speak to each other about them, and say 
how very simple religion seemed when he spoke of it, just 
to believe in our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who died for 
our sins, and to love him and to do all we can to make 
every one around us happier and better. What a blessing 
for people who are not clever, like Chriemhild and me, to 
have been born in days when we are taught that religion is 
faith and love, instead of all of those complicated rules and 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


321 


lofty supernatural virtues which people used to call religion. 

And yet they say faith, and love, and humility, are 
more really hard than all the old penances and good works. 

But that must be, I think, to people who have never 
heard, as we have from Dr. Luther, so much about God to 
make us love him; or to people who have more to be proud 
of than Chriemhild and I, and so find it more difficult to 
think little of themselves. 

EVA’s STORY. 

Wittenberg, October, 1522. 

How strange it seemed at first to be moving freely 
about in the world once more, and to come back to the old 
home at Wittenberg! Very strange to find the places so 
little changed, and the people so much. The little room 
where Else and I used to sleep, with scarcely an article of 
furniture altered, except that Thekla’s books are there 
instead of Else’s wooden crucifix; and the same view over 
the little garden, with its pear tree full of white blossom, 
to the Elbe with its bordering oak sand willows, all there in 
their freshest delicate early green, while the undulations 
of the level land faded in soft blues to the horizon. 

But, unlike the convent, all the changes in the people 
seemed to have been wrought by the touch of life rather 
than by that of death. 

In Else’s own home across the street, the ringing of those 
sweet childish voices, so new to me, and yet familiar with 
echoes of old tones and looks of our own well-remembered 
early days! And on Else herself the change seemed only 
such as that which develops the soft tints of spring into 
the green of shadowing leaves. 

Christopher has grown from the self-assertion of boyhood 
into the strength and protecting kindness of manhood. 
Uncle Cotta’s blindness seems to dignify him and make 
him the central object of every one’s tender, reverent care, 
while his visions grow brighter in the darkness, and more 
placid on account of his having no responsibility as to ful¬ 
filling them. He seems to me a kind of hallowing presence 
in the family, calling out every one’s sympathy and kind¬ 
ness, and pathetically reminding us by his loss of the 
preciousness of our common mercies. 

On the grandmother’s heart the light is more like dawn 


322 THE 8CE0NBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 

than sunset, so fresh, and soft, and full of hope her old age 
seems. The marks of fretting, daily anxiety and care have 
been smoothed from dear Aunt Cotta’s face; and although 
a deep shadow rests there often when she thinks of Fritz, 
I feel sure sorrow is not now to her the shadow of a moun¬ 
tain of divine wrath, but the shadow of a cloud which 
brings blessing and hides light, which the Sun of love drew 
forth, and the Rainbow of promise consecrates. 

Yet he has the place of the firstborn in her heart. 
With the others, though not forgotten, I think his place 
is partly filled—but never with her. Else’s life is very full. 
Atlantis never knew him as the elder ones did; and Thekla, 
dearly as she learned to love him during his little sojourn 
at Wittenberg, has her heart filled with the hopes of her 
future, or at times overwhelmed with its fears. With all 
it almost seems he would have in some measure to make a 
place again, if he were to return. But with Aunt Cotta, 
the blank is as utterly a blank, and a sacred place kept free 
from all intrusion, as if it were a chamber of our dead, 
kept jealously locked and untouched since the last day he 
stood living there. Yet he surely is not dead; I say so to 
myself and to her when she speaks of it, a thousand times. 
Why, then, does this hopeless feeling creep over me when 
I think of him? It seems so impossible to believe he ever 
can be among us any more. If it would please God only 
to send us some little word! But since that letter from 
Priest Rupreclit Haller, not a syllable has reached us. 
Two months since, Christopher went to this priest’s village 
in Franconia, and lingered some days in the neighborhood, 
making inquiries in every direction around the monastery 
where he is. But he could hear nothing, save that in the 
autumn of last year, the little son of a neighboring knight, 
who was watching his mother’s geese on the outskirts of 
the forest near the convent, used to hear the sounds of a 
man’s voice singing from the window of the tower where 
the convent prison is. The child used to linger near the 
spot to listen to the songs, which, he said, were so rich and 
deep—sacred, like church hymns, but more joyful than 
anything he ever heard at church. He thought they were 
Easter hymns; but since one evening in last October he has 
never heard them, although he has often listened. Nearly 
a year since now! 

Yet nothing can silence those resurrection hymns in his 

heart I 


THE SGEONBEUO-COTTA FAMILY. 


323 


Aunt Cotta’s great comfort is the holy sacrament. 
Nothing, she says, lifts up her heart like that. Other 
symbols, or writings, or sermons bring before her, she says, 
some part of truth; hut that the Holy Supper brings the 
Lord himself before her; not one truth about him, or an¬ 
other, but himself; not one act of his holy life alone, nor 
even his atoning death, but his very person, human and 
t divine; himself living, dying, conquering death, freely 
bestowing life. She has learned that to attend that holy 
sacrament is not as she once thought to perform a good 
work, which always left her more depressed than before 
with the feeling how unworthily and coldly she had done 
it; but to look off from self to him who finished the good 
work of redemption for us. As Dr. Melancthon says: 

“Just as looking at the cross is not the doing of a good 
work, but simply contemplating a sign which recalls to us 
the death of Christ; 

“Just as looking at the sun is not the doing of a good 
tfork, but simply contemplating a sign which recalls to us 
Christ and his Gospel; 

“So participating at the Lord’s supper is not the doing 
of a good work, but simply the making use of a sign which 
brings to mind the grace that has been bestowed on us by 
Christ.” 

“But here lies the difference; symbols discovered by man 
simply recall what they signify, whereas the signs given by 
God not only recall the things, but further assure the 
heart with respect to the will of God.” 

“As the sight of a cross does not justify, so the mass 
does not justify. As the sight of a cross is not a sacrifice, 
either for our sins or for the sins of others, so the mass is 
not a sacrifice.” 

“There is but one sacrifice, there is but one satisfaction 
—Jesus Christ. Beyond him there is nothing of the kind.” 

I have been trying constantly to find a refuge for the 
nine evangelical nuns I left at Nimptschen, but hitherto in 
vain. I do not, however, by any means despair. I have 
advised them now to write, themselves, to Dr. Luther. 

October, 1522. 

The German New Testament is published at last. 

On September the 21st it appeared; and that day, hap¬ 
pening to be Aunt Cotta’s birthday, when she came down 


324 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


among ns in the morning, Gottfried Reichenbach met her, 
and presented her with two large folio volumes in which it 
is printed, in the name of the whole family. 

Since then one volume always lies on a table in the gen¬ 
eral sitting-room, and one in the window of Aunt Cotta’s 
bedroom. 

Often now she comes down in the morning with a beam¬ 
ing face, and tells us of some verse she has discovered. 
Uncle Cotta calls it her diamond-mine, and says, “The 
little mother has found the El Dorado after all!” 

One morning it was: 

“Cast all your care on him, for he careth for you,” and 
that lasted her many days. 

To-day it was: 

“ Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; 
and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed; 
because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the 
Holy Ghost, which is given unto us.” “Eva,” she said, 
“ That seems to me so simple. It seems to me to mean, 
that when sorrow comes, then the great thing w T e have to 
do is, to see that we do not lose hold vi patience; she seems 
linked to all the other graces, and to lead them naturally 
into the heart, hand in hand, one by one. Eva, dear 
child,” she added, “is that what is meant?” 

I said how often those words had cheered me, and how 
happy it is to think that all the while these graces illumin¬ 
ing the darkness of the heart, the dark hours are passing 
away, until all at once hope steals to the casement and 
withdraws the shutters; and the light which has slowly 
been dawning all the time, streams into the heart, “the 
love of God shed abroad by the Holy Ghost.” 

“But,” rejoined Aunt Cotta, “we cannot ourselves bring 
in experience, or reach the hand of hope, or open the win¬ 
dow to let in the light of love; we can only look up to God, 
keep firm hold of patience, and she will bring all the rest.” 

“And yet,” I said, “peace comes before patience, peace 
with God through faith in him who was delivered for our 
offense. All these graces do not lead us up to God. We 
have access to him first, and in his presence we learn the 
rest.” 

Yes, indeed, the changes in the Wittenberg world since 
I left it, have been wrought by the hand of life and not by 
that of death, or time, which is his shadow. For have not 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 325 

the brightest been wrought by the touch of the Life him¬ 
self? 

It is God, not time, that has mellowed our grandmother’s 
character; it is God and not time that has smoothed the 
careworn wrinkles from Aunt Cotta’s brow. 

It is life and not death that has all but emptied the 
Augustinian convent, sending the monks back to their 
places in the world, to serve God and proclaim his Gospel. 

It is the water of life that is flowing through home after 
home in the channel of Dr. Luther’s German Testament, 
and bringing forth fruits of love, and joy, and peace. 

And we know it is life and not death which is reigning 
in that lonely prison, wherein the child heard the resur¬ 
rection hymns, and that is triumphing now in the heart of 
him who sang them, wherever he may be! 

thekla’s story. 


October, 1522. 

Once more the letters come regularly from Flanders; 
and in most ways their tidings are joyful. Nowhere 
throughout the world, Bertrand writes, does the evangel¬ 
ical doctrine find such an eager reception as there. The 
people in the great free cities have been so long accustomed 
to judge for themselves, and to speak their mind freely. 
The Augustinian monks who studied at Wittenberg, took 
back the Gospel with them to Antwerp, and preached it 
openly in their church, which became so thronged with 
eager hearers, that numbers had to listen outside the doors. 
It is true, Bertrand says, that the prior and one or two of 
the monks have been arrested, tried at Brussels, and 
silenced; but the rest continue undauntedly to preach as 
before, and the effect of the persecution has been only to 
deepen the interest of the citizens. 

The great new event which is occupying us all now, 
however, is the publication of Dr. Luther’s New Testa¬ 
ment. Chriemhild writes that it is the greatest boon to 
her, because being afraid to trust herself to say much, she 
simply reads, and the peasants seem to understand that 
book better than anything she can say about it; or even, 
if at any time they come to anything which perplexes 
them, they generally find that by simply reading on it 
grows quite clear. Also, she writes, Ulrich reads it every 


326 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


evening to all the servants, and it seems to hind the house¬ 
hold together wonderfully. They feel that at last they 
have found something inestimably precious, which is yet 
no “privilege” of man or class, hut the common property 
of all. 

In many families at Wittenberg the book is daily read, 
for there are few of those who can read at all who cannot 
afford a copy, since the price is but a florin and a half. 

New hymns also are beginning to spring up among us. 
We are no more living on the echo of old songs. A few 
days since a stranger from the north sang before Dr. Luther’s 
windows, at the Augustinian convent, a hymn beginning: 

“ Es ist das Heil uns kommen her.” 

Dr. Luther desired that it might be sung again. It was 
a response from Prussia to the glad tidings which have 
gone forth far and wide through his words! He said “he 
thanked God with a full heart.” 

The delight of having Eva among us once more is so 
great. Her presence seems to bring peace with it. It is 
not what she says or does, but what she is. It is more like the 
effect of music than anything else I know. A quiet seems to 
come over one’s heart from merely being with her. No one 
seems to fill so little space, or make so little noise in the 
world as Eva, when she is there; and yet when she is gone, 
it is as if the music and the light had passed from the 
place. Everything about her always seems so in tune. 
Her soft, quiet voice, her gentle, noiseless movements, her 
delicate features, the soft curve of her cheek, those deep 
loving eyes, of which one never seems able to remember 
anything but that Eva herself looks through them into 
your heart. 

All so different from me, who can scarcely ever come 
into a room without upsetting something, or disarranging 
some person, and can never enter on a conversation without 
upsetting some one’s prejudices, or grating on some one’s 
feelings. 

It seems to me sometimes as if God did indeed lead Eva, 
as the Psalm says, by his eye; as if he had trained her to 
what she is by the direct teaching of his gracious voice, 
instead of by the rough training of circumstances. And 
nevertheless, she never makes me feel her hopelessly above 
me. The light is not like a star, which makes one feel 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


327 


“how peaceful it must be there, in these heights,” but 
brings little light upon our path. It is like a lowly sun¬ 
beam coming down among us, and making us warm and 
bright. 

She always makes me think of the verse about the saint 
who was translated silently to heaven, because he had 
“walked witli God” Yes, I am sure that is her secret. 

Only I have a malicious feeling that I should like to see 
her for once thoroughly tossed out of her calm, just to be 
quite sure it is God’s peace,and not some natural or fairy gift, 
or a stoical impassiveness from the “Theologia Teutsch.” 
Sometimes I fancy for an instant whether it is not 
a little too much with Eva, as if she were “translated” 
already; as if she had passed to the other side of the deepest 
earthly joy and sorrow, at least as regards herself. Cer¬ 
tainly she has not as regards others. Her sympathy is 
indeed no condescending alms, flung from the other side 
of the flood, no pitying glance cast down on grief she feels, 
but could never share. Have I not seen her lip quiver, 
when I spoke of the dangers around Bertrand, even when 
my voice was firm, and felt her tears on my face when she 
drew me to her heart? 

December, 1522. 

That question at last is answered! I have seen Cousin 
Eva moved out of her calm, and feel at last quite sure she 
is not “translated” yet. Yesterday evening we were all 
sitting in the family-room. Our grandmother was dozing 
by the stove. Eva and my mother were busy at the table, 
helping Atlantis in preparing the dresses for her wedding, 
which is to be early in next year. I was reading to my 
father from Dr. Melancthon’s new book, “The Common 
Places,” which all learned people say is so much more 
elegant and beautifully written than Dr. Luther’s works, 
but which is to me like a composed book, and not like all 
Dr. Luther’s writings, a voice from the depths of a heart. 
I was feeling like my grandmother, a little sleepy, and, 
indeed, the whole atmosphere around us seemed drowsy 
and still, when our little maid, Lottchen, opened the door 
with a frightened expression, and before she could say any¬ 
thing, a pale, tall man stood there. Only Eva and I were 
looking toward the door. I could not think who it was, 
until a low startled voice exclaimed “Fritz,” and looking 
round at Eva, I saw she had fainted. 


328 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


In another instant he was kneeling beside her, lavishing 
every tender name on her, while my mother stood on the 
other side, holding the unconscious form in her arms, and 
sobbing out Fritz’s name. 

Our dear father stood up, asking bewildered questions— 
our grandmother awoke, and rubbing her eyes, surveyed 
the whole group with a puzzled expression, murmuring: 

“ Is it- a dream ? Or are the Zwickau prophets right after 
all, and is it the resurrection?” 

But no one seemed to remember that tears and endearing 
words and bewildered exclamations were not likely to 
restore any one from a fainting fit, until to my great satis¬ 
faction our good motherly Else appeared at the door, say¬ 
ing, “What is it? Lottchen ran over to tell me she 
thought there were thieves.” 

Then comprehending everything at a glance, she dipped 
a handkerchief in water, and bathed Eva’s brow, and 
fanned her with it until in a few minutes she awoke with 
a short sobbing breath, and in a little while her eyes 
opened, and as they rested on Fritz, a look of the most 
perfect rest came over her face, she placed her other hand 
on the one he held already, and closed her eyes again. I 
saw great tears falling under the closed eyelids. Then 
looking up again and seeing my mother bending over her, 
she drew down her hand and laid it on Fritz’s, and we left 
those three alone together. 

When we were all safely in the next room, we all by one 
impulse began to weep. I sobbed: 

“ He looks so dreadfully ill. I think they have all but 
murdered him.” And Else said: 

“She has exactly the same look on her face that came 
over it when she was recovering from the plague, and he 
stood motionless beside her, with that rigid, hopeless tran¬ 
quillity on his face, just before he left to be a monk. 
What will happen next?” 

And my grandmother said, in a feeble, broken voice: 

“He looks just as your grandfather did when he took 
leave of me in prison. Indeed, sometimes I am quite con¬ 
fused in mind. It seems as if things were coming over 
again. I can hardly make out whether it is a dream, or a 
ghost, or a resurrection.” 

Our father only did not join in our tears. He said what 
was very much wiser. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


329 


“Children, the greatest joy onr house has known since 
Fritz left has come to it to-day. Let us give God thanks.” 
And we all stood around him while he took the little velvet 
cap from his bald head and thanked God, while we all 
wept out our Amen. After that we grew calmer; the 
overwhelming tumult of feeling, in which we could scarcely 
tell joy from sorrow, passed, and we began to understand 
it was indeed a great joy which had been given to us. 

Then we heard a little stir in the house, and my mother 
summoned us back; but we found her alone with Fritz, 
and would insist on his submitting to an unlimited amount 
of family caresses and welcomes. 

“ Come, Fritz, and assure our grandmother that you are 
alive, and that you have never been dead,” said Else. And 
then her eyes filled with tears, she added, “ What you must 
have suffered! If I had not remembered you before you 
received the tonsure, I should scarcely have known you 
now with your dark, long beard and your white, thin face.” 

“Yes,” observed Atlantis in the deliberate way in which 
she usually announces her discoveries, “no doubt this is the 
reason why Eva recognized Fritz before Thekla did, 
although they were both facing the door, and must have 
seen him at the same time. She remembered him before 
he received the tonsure.” 

We all smiled a little at Atlantis’ discovery, whereupon 
she looked up with a bewildered expression, and said, “ Do 
you think, then, she did not recognize him? I did not 
think of that. Probably, then, she took him for a thief, 
like Lottchen!” 

Fritz was deep in conversation with our mother, and was 
not heeding us, but Else laughed softly as she patted 
Atlantis’ hand, and said: 

“Conrad Winkelried must have expressed himself very 
plainly, sister, before you understood him.” 

“He did, sister Else,” replied Atlantis, gravely. “But 
what has that to do with Eva?” 

When I went up to our room, Eva’s and mine, I found 
her kneeling by the bed. In a few minutes she rose, and 
clasping me in her arms, she said: 

“God is very good, Thekla. I have believed that so 
long, but never half enough until to-night.” 

I saw that she had been weeping, but the old calm had 
come back to her face, only with a little more sunshine on it. 


330 


TEE SGHONBEllG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


Then, as if she feared to be forgetting others in he* own 
happiness, she took my hand, and said: 

“ Dear Thekla, He is leading us all through all the dark 
days to the morning. We must never distrust him any 
more. 

And without saying another word we retired to rest. In 
the morning when I woke Eva was sitting beside me with 
a lamp on the table, and the large Latin Bible open before 
her. I watched her face for some time. It looked so pure, 
and good, and happy, with that expression on it which 
always helped me to understand the meaning of the words, 
“child of God,” “little children,” as Dr. Melancthon says 
our Lord called his disciples just before he left them. 
There was so much of the unclouded trustfulness of the 
“child” in it, and yet so much of the peace and depth 
which are of God. 

After looking at her a little while she closed the Bible, 
and began to alter a dress of mine which she had promised 
to prepare for Christmas. As she was sewing, she hummed 
softly, as she was accustomed, some strains of old church 
music. At length I said: 

“Eva, how old were you when Fritz became a monk?” 

“Sixteen,” she said softly; “he went away just after the 
plague.” 

“Then you have been separated twelve long years,” I 
said. “God, then, sometimes exercises patience a long 
while.” 

“It does not seem long now,” she said; “we both be¬ 
lieved we were separated by God, and separated forever on 
earth.” 

“Poor Eva,” I said; “and this was the sorrow which 
helped to make you so good.” 

“I did not know it had been so great a sorrow, Thekla,” 
she said with a quivering voice, “until last night.” 

“Then you had loved each other all that time,” I said, 
half to myself. 

“I suppose so,” she said in a low voice. “But I never 
knew till yesterday how much.” 

After a short silence she began again, with a smile. 

“Thekla, he thinks me unchanged during all those 
years; me, the matron of the novices! But, oh, how he is 
changed! What a lifetime of suffering on his face! How 
they must have made him suffer!” 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


331 


.“ God gives it to yon as your life-work to restore and help 
him,” I said. “Oh Eva, it must be the best woman’s lot 
in the world to bind up for the dearest on earth the wounds 
which men have inflicted because he loved God best. It 
must be joy unutterable to receive back from God’s own 
hands a love you have both so dearly proved you were ready 
to sacrifice for him.” 

“Your mother thinks so too,” she said. “She said last 
night the vows which would bind us together would be 
holier than any ever uttered by saint or hermit.” 

“Did our mother say that?” I asked. 

“ Yes,” replied Eva. “And she said she was sure Dr. 
Luther would think so also.” 

fritz’s story. 

December 31, 1522. 

We are betrothed. Solemnly in the presence of our 
family and friends Eva has promised to be my wife; and 
in a few weeks we are to be married. Our home (at all 
events, at first) is to be in the Thuringian forest, in the 
parsonage belonging to Ulrich von Gersdorf’s castle. The 
old priest is too aged to do anything. Chriemhild has set 
her heart on having us to reform the peasantry, and they 
all believe the quiet and the pure air of the forest will 
restore my health, which has been rather shattered by all I 
have gone through during these last months, although not 
as much as they think. I feel strong enough for anything 
already. What I have lost during all those years in being 
separated from her! How poor and one-sided my life has 
been! How strong the rest her presence gives me, makes 
me to do whatever work God may give me! 

Amazing blasphemy on God to assert that the order in 
which he has founded human life is disorder, that the love 
which the Son of God compares to the relation between 
himself and his church sullies or lowers the heart. 

Have these years then been lost? Have I wandered 
away willful and deluded from the lot of blessing God had 
appointed me, since that terrible time of the plague, at 
Eisenach? Have all these been wasted years? Has all the 
suffering been fruitless, unnecessary pain? And, after all, 
do I return with precious time lost and strength diminished 
just to the point I might have reached so long ago? 

For Eva I am certain this is not so; every step of her 


332 


THE 8CH0NBERG-G0TTA FAMILY. 


way, the loving hand has led her. Did not the convent 
through her become a home or a way to the Eternal Home 
to many? But for me? No, for me also the years have 
brought more than they have taken away. Those who are 
to help the perplexed and toiling men of their time, must 
first go down into the conflicts of their time. Is it not this 
which makes even Martin Luther the teacher of our nation? 
Is it not this which qualifies weak and sinful men to be 
preachers of the Gospel instead of angels from heaven? 

The holy angels sang on their heavenly heights the glad 
tidings of great joy, but the shepherds, and fishermen, and 
the publican spoke it in the homes of men! The angel 
who liberated the apostles from prison said, as if spontane¬ 
ously, from the fullness of his heart, “ Go speak to the peo¬ 
ple the words of this life” But the trembling lips of Peter 
who had denied, and Thomas who had doubted, and John 
who had misunderstood, were to speak the life-giving 
words to men, denying, doubting, misconceiving men, to 
tell what they knew, and how the Saviour could forgive. 

The voice that had been arrested in cowardly curses by 
the look of divine pardoning love, had a tone in it the 
Archangel Michael’s could never have! 

And when the Pharisees, hardest of all, were to be 
reached, God took a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a blas¬ 
phemer, a persecutor, one who could say, “ I might also 
have confidence in the flesh, I persecuted the church of 
God.” 

Was David’s secret contest in vain, when slaying the lion 
and the bear, to defend those few sheep in the wilderness, 
he proved the weapons with which he slew Goliath and 
rescued the hosts of Israel? Were Martin Luther’s years 
in the convent at Erfurt lost? Or have they not been the 
schooldays of his life, the armory where his weapons were 
forged, the gymnasium in which his eye and hand were 
trained for the battlefield? 

He has seen the monasteries from within; he has felt the 
monastic life from within. He can say of all these exter¬ 
nal rules, “ I have proved them, and found them powerless 
to sanctify the heart.” It is this which gives the irresisti¬ 
ble power to his speaking and writing. It is this which by 
God’s grace enables him to translate the Epistles of St. 
Paul the Pharisee and Apostle as he has done. The truths 
had been translated by the Holy Spirit into the language 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 333 

of his experience, and graven on his heart long before; so 
that in rendering the Greek into German he also testified 
of things he had seen, and the Bible from his pen reads as 
if it had been originally written in German, for the German 
people. 

To me also in my measure these years have not been 
time lost. There are many truths that one only learns in 
their fullness by proving the bitter bondage of the errors 
they contradict. 

Perhaps also we shall help each other and others around 
us better for having been thus trained apart. 1 used to 
dream of the joy of leading her into life. But now God 
gives her back to me enriched with all those years of separate 
experience, not as the Eva of childhood, when I saw her 
last, but ripened to perfect womanhood; not merely to 
reflect my thoughts, but to blend the fullness of her life 
with mine. 


EVA’s STORY. 

Wittenberg, January, 1525. 

How little idea I had how the thought of Fritz was 
interwoven with all my life! He says he knew only too 
well how the thought of me was bound up with every hope 
and affection of his! 

But he contended against it long. He said that conflict 
was far more agonizing than all he suffered in the prison 
since. For many years he thought it sin to think of me. 
I never thought it sin to think of him. I was sure it was 
not, whatever my confessor might say. Because I had 
always thanked God more than for anything else in the 
world, for all he had been to me, and had taught me, and 
I felt so sure what I could thank God for, could not be 
wrong. 

But now it is duty to love him best. Of that I am quite 
sure. And certainly it is not difficult. My only fear is 
that he will be disappointed in me when he learns just 
what I am, day by day, with all the halo of distance gone. 
And yet I am not really afraid. Love weaves better glories 
than "the mists of distance. And we do not expect miracles 
from each other, or that life is to be paradise. Only the 
unutterable comfort of being side by side in every conflict, 
trial, joy, and supporting each other! If I can say “ only” 


334 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


of that! For I do believe onr help will be mutual Far 
weaker and less wise as I am than he is, with a range of 
thought and experience so much narrower, and a force of 
purpose so much feebler, I feel I have a kind of strength 
which may in some way, at some times even help Fritz. 
And it is this which makes me see the good of these sepa¬ 
rated years, in which otherwise I might have lost so much. 
With him the whole world seems so much larger and higher 
to me, and yet during these years, I do feel God has 
taught me something, and it is a happiness to have a little 
more to bring him than I could have had in my early girl¬ 
hood. 

It was for my sake, then, he made that vow of leaving 
us forever! 

And Aunt Cotta is so happy. On that evening when he 
returned, and we three were left alone, she said, after a few 
minutes’ silence: 

“ Children, let us all kneel down, and thank God that he 
has given me the desire of my heart.” 

And afterward she told us what she had always wished 
and planned for Fritz and me, and how she had thought 
his abandoning of the world a judgment for her sins; but 
how she was persuaded now that the curse borne for us 
was something infinitely more than anything she could 
have endured, and that it had been all borne, and nailed to 
the bitter cross, and rent and blotted out forever. And 
now, she said, she felt as if the last shred of evil were 
gone, and her life were beginning again in us—to be blessed 
and a blessing beyond her utmost dreams. 

Fritz does not like to speak much of what he suffered 
in the prison of that Dominican convent, and least of all 
to me; because, although 1 repeat to myself, “It is over— 
over forever!” whenever I think of his having been on the 
dreadful rack, it all seems present again. 

He was on the point of escaping the very night they 
came and led him in for examination in the torture-cham¬ 
ber. And after that, they carried him back to prison, and 
seem to have left him to die there. For two days they 
sent him no food; but then the young monk who had first 
spoken to him, and induced him to come to the convent, 
managed to steal to him almost every day with food and 
water, and loving words of sympathy, until his strength 
revived a little, and they escaped together through the 
opening he had dug in the wall before the examination. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


335 


But their escape was soon discovered, and they had to hide 
in the caves and recesses of the forest for many weeks 
before they could strike across the country and find their 
way to Wittenberg at last. 

But it is over now. And yet not over. He who suffered 
will never forget the suffering faithfully borne for him. 
And the prison at the Dominican convent will be a foun¬ 
tain of strength for his preaching among the peasants in 
the Thuringian Forest. He will be able to say, “ God can 
sustain in all trials. He will not suffer you to be tempted 
above that you are able to bear. I know it , for I have 
proved it.” And I think that will help him better to 
translate the Bible to the hearts of the poor, than even the 
Greek and Hebrew he learned at Rome and Tubingen. 

else’s story. 

All our little world is in such a tumult of thankfulness 
and joy at present, that I think I am the only sober person 
left in it. 

The dear mother hovers around her two lost ones with 
quiet murmurs of content, like a dove around her nest, and 
is as absorbed as if she were marrying her first daughter, or 
were a bride herself, instead of being the established and 
honored grandmother that she is. Chriemhild and I might 
find it difficult not to be envious, if we had not our own 
private consolations at home. 

Eva and Fritz are certainly far more reasonable, and 
instead of regarding the whole world as centering in them, 
like our dear mother, appear to consider themselves made to 
serve the whole world, which is more Christian-like, but 
must also have its limits. I cannot but feel it a great 
blessing for them that they have Chriemhild and Ulrich, 
and more especially Gottfried and me, to look after their 
temporal affairs. 

For instance, house linen. Eva, of course has not a 
piece; and as to her bridal attire, I believe she would be 
content to be married in a nun’s robe, or in the peasant’s 
dress she escaped from Eimptschen in. However, I have 
stores which, as Gretchen is not likely to require them just 
yet, will, no doubt, answer the purpose. Gretchen is not 
more than eight, but I always think it well to be before¬ 
hand ; and my maidens had already a stock of linen enough 


336 


TEE 8CH0NBERG-C0TTA FAMILY . 


to stock several chests for her, which, under the circunw 
stances, seems quite a special providence. 

Gottfried insists upon choosing her wedding dress. And 
my mother believes her own ancestral jeweled headdress 
with the pearls (which once in our poverty we nearly sold 
to a merchant at Eisenach) has been especially preserved 
for Eva. 

It is well that Atlantis, who is to be married on the same 
day, is the meekest and most unselfish of brides, and that 
her marriage outfit is already all but arranged. 

Chriemhild and Ulrich have persuaded the old knight 
to rebuild the parsonage; and she writes what a delight it 
is to watch it rising among the cottages in the village, and 
think of the fountain of blessing that house will be to all. 

Our grandmother insists on working with her dear, feeble 
hands, on Eva’s wedding stores, and has ransacked her 
scanty remnants of former splendor, and brought out many 
a quaint old jewel from the ancient Schonherg treasures. 

Christopher is secretly preparing them a library of all 
Dr. Luther’s and Dr. Melancthon’s books, beautifully 
bound, and I do not know how many learned books besides. 

And the melancholy has all passed from Fritz’s face, or 
only remains as the depth of a river to bring out the sparkle 
of its ripples. 

The strain seems gone from Eva’s heart and his. They 
both seem for the first time all they were meant to be. 

Just now, however, another event is almost equally fill¬ 
ing our grandmother’s heart. 

A few days since, Christopher brought in two foreigners 
to introduce to us. When she saw them, her work dropped 
from her hands, and half rising to meet them, she said 
some words in a language strange to all of us. 

The countenance of the strangers brightened as she 
spoke, and they replied in the same language. 

After a few minutes’ conversation, our grandmother 
turned to us, and said: 

“ They are Bohemians—they are Hussites. They know 
my husband’s name. The truth he died for is still living 
in my country.” 

The rush of old associations was too much for her. Her 
lips quivered, the tears fell slowly over her cheeks, and she 
could not say another word. 

The strangers consented to remain under my father’s 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMIL Y. 337 

roof for the night, and told ns the errand which brought 
them to Wittenberg. 

From generation to generation, since John Huss was 
martyred, they said, the truth he taught had been pre¬ 
served in Bohemia, always at the risk, and often at the cost 
of life. Sometimes it had perplexed them much that 
nowhere in the world beside could they hear of those who 
believed the same truth. Could it be possible that the 
truth of God was banished to their mountain fastnesses? 
Like Elijah of old, they felt disposed to cry in their wil¬ 
derness, “I, only I, am left.” 

“But they could not have been right to think thus,” 
said my mother, who never liked the old religion to be too 
much reproached. “ God has always had his own who have 
loved him, in the darkest days. From how many convent 
cells have pious hearts looked up to him. It requires great 
teaching of the Holy Spirit and many battles to make a 
Luther; but, I think, it requires only to touch the hem of 
Christ’s garment to make a Christian.” 

“Yes,” said Gottfried, opening our beloved comments on 
the Galatians, “what Dr. Luther said is true indeed, ‘Some 
there were in the olden time whom God called by the text 
of the Gospel and by baptism. These walked in simplicity 
and humbleness of heart, thinking the monks and friars, 
and such only as were anointed by the bishops, to be reli¬ 
gious and holy, and themselves to be profane and secular, 
and not worthy to be compared to them. Wherefore, they, 
feeling in themselves no good works to set against the 
wrath and judgment of God, did fly to the death and pas¬ 
sion of Christ, and were saved in this simplicity.’ ” 

“No doubt it was so,” said the Bohemian deputies. 
“ But all this was hidden from the eye of man. Twice our 
fathers sent secret messengers through the length and 
breadth of Christendom, to see if they could find any that 
did understand, that did seek after God, and everywhere 
they found carelessness, superstition, darkness, no re¬ 
sponse.” 

“Ah,” said my mother, “that is a search only the eye ot 
God can make. Yet, doubtless, the days were dark.” 

“They came back without having met with any re¬ 
sponse,” continued the strangers, “and again our fathers 
had to toil and suffer on alone. And now the sounds of 
life have reached us in our mountain solitudes from all 


338 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


parts of the world; and we have come to Wittenberg to 
hear the voice which awoke them first, and to claim 
brotherhood with the evangelical Christians here. Dr. 
Luther has welcomed us, and we return to our mountains 
to tell our people that the morning has dawned on the 
world at last.” 

The evening passed in happy intercourse, and before we 
separated, Christopher brought his lute, and we all sang 
together the hymn of John Huss, which Dr. Luther has 
published among his own: 

“ Jesus Cliristus nostra salus,” 

and afterward Luther’s own glorious hymn in German: 

“Nun freut euch lieben Christen gemein.” 

Dear Christian people, all rejoice. 

Each soul with joy upspringing; 

Pour forth one song with heart and voice, 

With love and gladness singing, 

Give thanks to God, our Lord, above. 

Thanks for his miracle of love; 

Dearly he hath redeemed us! 

The devil’s captive bound I lay, 

Lay in death’s chains forlorn; 

My sins distressed me night and day— 

The sin within me born; 

I could not do the thing 1 would, 

In all my life was nothing good, 

Sin had possessed me wholly. 

My good works could no comfort shed, 

Worthless must they be rated; 

My free will to all good was dead. 

And God’s just judgments hated. 

Me of all hope my sins bereft; 

Nothing but death to me was left, 

And death was hell’s dark portal. 

Then God saw with deep pity moved 
My grief that knew no measure; 

Pitying he saw, and freely loved— 

To save me was his pleasure. 

The Father’s heart to me was stirred. 

He saved me with no sovereign word. 

His very best it cost him. 

He spoke to his beloved Son 
With infinite compassion, 


339 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY,\ 

“ Go lienee, my heart’s most precious crown 
Be to the lost salvation; 

Death, his relentless tyrant slay. 

And bear him from his sins away, 

With thee to live forever.” 

Willing the Son took that behest, 

Born of a maiden mother, 

To his own earth he came a guest, 

And made himself my brother. 

All secretly he went his way. 

Veiled in my mortal flesh he lay, 

And thus the foe he vanquished. 

He said to me, “ Cling close to me, 

Thy sorrows now are ending; 

Freely I gave myself for thee, 

Thy life with mine defending; 

For I am thine, and thou art mine, 

And where I am there thou shalt shine. 

The foe shall never reach us. 

“ True, he will shed my heart’s life blood, 

And torture me to death; 

All this I suffer for thy good, 

This hold with firmest faith. 

Death dieth through my life divine; 

I sinless bear those sins of thine. 

And so shalt thou be rescued. 

“ I rise again to heaven from hence, 

High to my Father soaring. 

Thy Master there to be, and thence, 

My Spirit on thee pouring; 

In every grief to comfort thee, 

And teach thee more and more of me. 

Into all truth still guiding. 

“ What I have done and taught on earth 
Do thou, and teach, none dreading; 

That so God’s kingdom may go forth, 

And his high praise be spreading; 

And guard thee from the words of men, 

Lest the great joy be lost again; 

Thus my last charge I leave thee.” 

Afterward, at our mother’s especial desire, Eva, and 
Fritz sang a Latin resurrection hymn from the olden time.* 

*Mundi renovatio 
Nova parit gaudia, 

Resurgente Domino 
Conresurgunt omnia; 



340 


THE SGHONBERO-CO1 'TA FAMILY. 


The renewal of the world 

Countless new joys bringeth forth: 

Christ arising, all things rise— 

Rise with him from earth. 

All the creatures feel their Lord— 

Feel his festal light outpoured. 

Fire springs up with motion free, 

Breezes wake up soft and warm; 

Water flows abundantly, 

Earth remaineth firm. 

All things light now sky-ward soar. 

Solid things are rooted more: 

All things are made new. 

Ocean waves, grown tranquil, lie 
Smiling ’neatli the heavens serene; 

All the air breathes light and fresh; 

Our valley groweth green. 

Verdure clothes the arid plain, 

Frozen waters gush again 
At the touch of spring. 

For the frost of death is melted, 

The prince of this world lieth low; 

And his empire strong among us. 

All is broken now. 

Grasping Him in whom alone 

He could nothing claim or own. 

His domain he lost. 

Paradise is now regained, 

Life has vanquished death; 

And the joys he long had lost, 

Man recovereth. 

The cherubim at God’s own word 

Turn aside the flaming sword! 

The long-lost blessing is restored. 

The closed way opened free.* * 

The next morning the strangers left ns; bnt all the day 
onr grandmother sat silent and tranquil, with her hands 
clasped, in an inactivity very nnnsual with her. In the 
evening, when we had assembled again—as we all do now 


Elementa serviunt, 

Et auctoris sentiunt, 

Quanta sint solemnia, 
etc., etc., etc. 

The translation only is given above. 

*Adam of St. Victor, twelfth century 



THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


341 


every day in the old house—she said quietly, “Children, 
sing to me the ‘Nunc Dimittis.’ God has fulfilled every 
desire of my heart; and, if he willed it, I should like to 
depart in peace to them, my dead. For I know they live 
unto him.” 

Afterward, we fell into conversation about the past. It 
was the eve of the wedding-day of Eva and Fritz, and 
Atlantis and Conrad. And we, a family united in one 
faith, naturally spoke together of the various ways in 
which God had led us to the one end. 

The old days rose up before me, when the ideal of holi¬ 
ness had towered above my life, grim and stony, like the 
fortress of the Wartburg (in which my patroness had lived), 
above the streets of Eisenach; and when even Christ the 
Lord seemed to me, as Dr. Luther says, “a law-maker giv¬ 
ing more strait and heavy commands than Moses himself” 
—an irrevocable, unapproachable Judge, enthroned far up 
in the cold spaces of the sky; and heaven like a convent, 
with very high walls, peopled by nuns rigid as Aunt Agnes. 
And then the change which came over all my heart when 
I learned, through Dr. Luther’s teaching, that God is love 
—is our Father; that Christ is the Saviour, who gave him¬ 
self for our sins, and loved us better than life; that heaven 
is our Father’s house; that holiness is simply loving God 
—who is so good, and who has so loved us, and, loving one 
another, that the service we have to render is simply to 
give thanks and to do good; when, as Dr. Luther said, 
that word “ our” was written deeply in my heart—that for 
our sins He died—lor mine, that for all, for us, for me , He 
gave himself. 

And then Fritz told us how he had toiled and tormented 
himself to reconcile God to him, until he found, through 
Dr. Luther’s teaching, that our sins have been borne away 
by the Lamb of God—the sacrifice not of man’s gift, but 
of God’s; “that in that one person, Jesus Christ, we had 
forgiveness of sins and eternal life;” that God is to us as 
the father to the prodigal son—entreating us to be recon¬ 
ciled to him. And he told us also, how he had longed for 
a priest, who could know infallibly all his heart, and secure 
him from the deceitfulness and imperfectness of his own 
confessions, and assure him that, knowing all his sin to its 
depths, with all its aggravations, he yet pronounced him 
absolved. And at last he had found that Priest, penetrat- 


342 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


ing to the depths of his heart, tracing every act to its 
motive, every motive to its source, and yet pronouncing 
him absolved, freely, fully, at once—imposing no penance, 
but simply desiring a life of thanksgiving in return. “ And 
this Priest,” he added, “is with me always; I make my 
confession to him every evening, or oftener, if I need it; 
and as often as I confess, He absolves, and bids me be of 
good courage—go in peace, and sin no more. But He is 
not on earth. He dwells in the holy of holies, which never 
more is empty, like the solitary sanctuary of the old temple 
on all days in the year but one. He ever liveth to make 
intercession for us!” 

Then we spoke together of the two great facts Dr. 
Luther had unveiled to us from the holy Scriptures, that 
there is one sacrifice of atonement, the spotless Lamb of 
God, who gave himself once for our sins; and that there is 
but one priestly Mediator, the Son of man and Son of God; 
that, in consequence of this, all Christians are a holy 
priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices; and the feeblest 
has his offering, which, through Jesus Christ, God delights 
to accept, having first accepted the sinner himself in the 
beloved. 

Our mother spoke to us, in a few words, of the dreadful 
thought she had of God—picturing him rather as the 
lightning than the light; of the curse which she feared 
was lowering like a thunder-cloud over her life, until Dr. 
Luther began to show her that the curse has been borne 
for us by Him who was made a curse for us, and removed 
forever from all who trust in him. “And then,” she said, 
“ the Holy Supper taught me the rest. He bore for us the 
cross; he spreads for us the feast. V/e have, indeed, the 
cross to bear, but never more the curse; the cross from 
man, temptation from the devil, but from God nothing but 
blessing.” 

But Eva said she could not remember the time when she 
did not think God good and kind beyond all. There were 
many other things in religion which perplexed her; but 
this had always seemed clear, that God so loved the world, 
he gave his Son. And she had always hoped that all the 
rest would be clear one day in the light of that love. The 
joy which Dr. Luther’s writings had brought her was, she 
thought, like seeing the stains cleared away from some 
beautiful painting, whose beauty she had known but not 


THE SCHON BERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


343 


fully seen—or like having a misunderstanding explained 
about a dear friend. She had always wondered about the 
hard penances to appease One who loved so much, and the 
many mediators to approach him; and it had been an inex¬ 
pressible delight to find that these were all a mistake, and 
that access to God was indeed open—that the love and the 
sin, and life and death, had met on the cross, and the sin 
had been blotted out, and death swallowed up of life. 

In such discourse we passed the eve of the wedding day. 

And now the day has vanished like a bright vision; our 
little gentle, loving Atlantis has gone with her husband to 
their distant home, the bridal crowns are laid aside, and 
Eva and Fritz in their sober everyday dress, but with the 
crown of unfading joy in their hearts, have gone together 
to their lowly work in the forest, to make one more of 
those hallowed pastor’s homes which are springing up now 
in the villages of our land. 

But Gretchen’s linen-chest is likely to be long before it 
can be stored again. We have just received tidings of the 
escape of Eva’s friends, the nine nuns of Nimptschen, 
from the convent, at last! They wrote to Dr. Luther, 
who interested himself much in seeking asylums for them. 
And now Master Leonard Koppe of Torgau has brought 
them safely to Wittenberg concealed in his beer wagon. 
They say one of the nuns in their haste left her slipper be¬ 
hind. They are all to be received into various homes, and 
Gottfried and I are to have the care of Catherine von Bora, 
the most determined and courageous, it is said, of all, from 
whose cell they effected their escape. 

I have been busy preparing the guest-chamber for her, 
strewing lavender on the linen, and trying to make it 
home-like for the young maiden who is banished for 
Christ’s sake from her old home. 

I think it must bring blessings to any home to have such 
guests. 

June, 1523. 

Our guest, the noble maiden Catherine von Bora, has 
arrived. Grave and reserved she seems to be, although 
Eva spoke of her as very cheerful, and light as well as firm 
of heart. I feel a little afraid of her. Her carriage has a 
kind of majesty about it which makes me offer her more 
deference than sympathy. Her eyes are dark and flashing, 
and her forehead is high and calm. 


344 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


This is not so remarkable in me who w r as always easily 
appalled by dignified persons; but even Dr. Luther, it 
seems to me, is somewhat awed by this young maiden. He 
thinks her rather haughty and reserved. I am not sure 
whether it is pride or a certain maidenly dignity. 

I am afraid I have too much of the homely burgher 
Cotta nature to be quite at ease with her. 

Our grandmother would doubtless have understood her 
better than either our gentle mother or I, but the dear 
feeble form seems to have been gradually failing since that 
meeting with the emissaries of the Bohemian church. 
Since the wedding she has not once left her bed. She 
seems to live more than ever in the past, and calls people 
by the names she knew them by in her early days, speaking 
of our grandfather as “Franz,” and calling our mother 
“Greta” instead of “the mother.” In the past she seems to 
live, and in that glorious present, veiled from her view by 
so thin a veil. Toward heaven the heart, whose earthly 
vision is closing, is as open as ever. 

I sit beside her and read the Bible and Dr. Luther’s 
books, and Gretchen says to her some of the new German 
hymns, Dr. Luther’s, and his translation of John Huss’ 
hymns. To-day she made me read again and again this 
passage: “Christian faith is not, as some say, an empty 
husk in the heart until love shall quicken it; but if it be 
true faith, it is a sure trust and confidence in the heart 
whereby Christ is apprehended, so that Christ is the object 
of faith; yea , rather even , in faith Christ himself is pres¬ 
ent. Faith therefore justifieth because it apprehendeth 
and possesseth this treasure, Christ present. Wherefore 
Christ apprehended by faith, and dwelling in the heart, is 
the true Christian righteousness.” 

It is strange to sit in the old house, now so quiet, with 
our dear blind father downstairs, and only Thekla at home 
of all the sisters, and the light in that brave, strong heart 
of our grandmother growing slowly dim; or to hear the 
ringing, sweet, childish voice of Gretchen repeating the 
hymns of this glorious new time to the failing heart of the 
olden time. 

Last night, while I watched beside that sick bed, I 
thought much of Dr. Luther alone in the Augustinian 
monastery, patiently abiding in the dwelling his teaching 
has emptied, sending forth thence workers and teachers 


THE SCEONBEUQ-COTTA FAMILY . 


345 


throughout the world; and as I pondered what he has been 
to us, to Fritz and Eva in their lowly, hallowed home, to 
our mother, to our grandmother, and the Bohemian people, 
to little Gretchen singing his hymns to me, to the nine 
rescued nuns, to Aunt Agnes in the convent, and Chris¬ 
topher at his busy printing-press, to young and old, reli¬ 
gious and secular; I wonder what the new time will bring 
to that brave, tender, warm heart which has set so many 
hearts which were in bondage free, and made life rich to so 
many who were poor, yet has left his own life so solitary 
still. 


PART XIX. 

EVA’S STORY. 

Thuringian Forest, July, 1522. 

It is certainly very much happier for Fritz and me to 
live in the pastor’s house than in the castle; down among 
the homes of men, and the beautiful mysteries of this 
wonderful forest land, instead of towering high above all 
on a fortified height. Not of course that I mean the heart 
may not be as lowly in the castle as in the cottage; but it 
seems to me a richer and more fruitful life to dwell among 
the people than to be raised above them. The character of 
the dwelling seems to symbolize the nature of the life. 
And what lot can be so blessed as ours? 

Linked to all classes that we may serve our Master who 
came to minister among all. In education equal to the 
nobles, or rather to the patrician families of the great 
cities, who so far surpass the country proprietors in cul¬ 
ture, in circumstances the pastor is nearer the peasant, 
knowing by experience what are the homely trials of strait¬ 
ened means. Little offices of kindness can be interchanged 
between us. Muhme Triidchen finds a pure pleasure in 
bringing me a basket of her new-laid eggs as an acknowl¬ 
edgment of Fritz’s visits to her sick boy; and it makes it 
all the sweeter to carry food to the family of the old char¬ 
coal-burner in the forest-clearing that our meals for a day 
or two have to be a little plainer in consequence. I think 
gifts which come from loving contrivance, and a little self- 
denial, must be more wholesome to receive than the mere 
overflowings of a full store. And I am sure they are far 



346 


THE 8CH0NBER0-G0TTA FAMILY. 


sweeter to give. Our lowly home seems in some sense the 
father’s house of the village; and it is such homes, such 
hallowed centers of love and ministry which God through 
our Luther is giving back to village after village in our 
land. 

But, as Fritz says, I must be careful not to build our 
parsonage into a pinnacle higher than any castle, just to 
make a pedestal for him, which I certainly sometimes detect 
myself doing. His gifts seem to me so rich, and his char¬ 
acter is, I am sure, so noble, that it is natural I should 
picture to myself his vocation as the highest in the world; 
that it is the highest, however, I am secretly convinced; 
the highest as long as it is the lowliest. 

The people begin to be quite at home with us now. 
There are no great gates, no moat, no heavy drawbridge 
between us and the peasants. Our doors stand open; and 
timid hands which could never knock to demand admit¬ 
tance at castle or convent gate can venture gently to lift 
our latch. Mothers creep to the kitchen with their sick 
children to ask for herbs, lotions, or drinks, which I learned 
to distill in the convent. And then I can ask them to sit 
down, and we often naturally begin to speak of Him who 
healed the sick people with a word, and took the little 
children from the mother’s arms to his to bless them. 
Sometimes, too, stories of wrong and sorrow come out to 
me which no earthly balm can cure, and I can point to 
Him who only can heal because he only can forgive. 

Then Fritz says he can preach so differently from know¬ 
ing the heart-cares and burdens of his flock; and the peo¬ 
ple seem to feel so differently when they meet again from 
the pulpit with sacred words and histories which they have 
grown familiar with in the home. 

A few of the girls come to me also to learn sewing or 
knitting, and to listen or learn to read Bible stories. Fritz 
meanwhile instructs the boys in the Scriptures and in 
sacred music, because the schoolmaster is waxing old and 
can teach the children little but a few Latin prayers by 
rote, and to spell out the German alphabet. 

I could not have imagined such ignorance as we have 
found here. It seems, Fritz says, as if the first preachers 
of Christianity to the Germans had done very much for the 
heart of the nation what the first settlers did for its forests, 
made a clearing here and there, built a church, and left the 
rest to its original state. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


347 


The bears and wolves which prowl about the forest, and 
sometimes in winter venture close to the thresholds of our 
houses, are no milder than the wild legends which haunt 
the hearts of the peasants. On Sundays they attire them¬ 
selves in their holiday clothes, come to hear mass, bow 
before the sacred host, and the crucifix and image of the 
Virgin, and return to continue during the week their 
everyday terror-worship of the spirits of the forest. They 
seem practically to think our Lord is the God of the church 
and the village, while the old pagan sprites retain posses¬ 
sion of the forest. They appear scarcely even quite to 
have decided St. Christopher’s question, “ Which is the 
strongest , that I may worship him?” 

But, alas, whether at church or in the forest, the wor¬ 
ship they have been taught seems to have been chiefly one 
of fear. The Cobolds and various sprites they believe will 
bewitch their cows, set fire to their haystacks, lead them 
astray through the forest, steal their infants from the 
cradle to replace them by fairy changelings. Their malig¬ 
nity and wrath they deprecate, therefore, by leaving them 
gleanings of corn or nuts, by speaking of them with 
feigned respect; or by Christian words and prayer, which 
they use as spells. 

From the Almighty God they fear severer evil. He, 
they think, is to sit on the dreadful day of wrath on the 
judgment throne to demand strict account of all their mis¬ 
deeds. Against his wrath also they have been taught to 
use various remedies which seem to us little better than a 
kind of spiritual spells; paters, aves, penances, confession, 
indulgences. 

To protect them against the forest sprites they have 
secret recourse to certain gifted persons, mostly shriveled, 
solitary, weird old .women (successors, Fritz says, of the 
old pagan prophetesses), who for money perform certain 
rites of white magic for them; or give them written charms 
to wear, or teach them magic rhymes to say. 

To protect them against God, they used to have recourse 
to the priest, who performed masses for them, laid ghosts, 
absolved sins, promised to turn aside the vengeance of 
offended heaven. 

But in both cases they seem to have the melancholy per¬ 
suasion that the ruling power is hostile to them. In both 
cases, religion is not so much a worship as a spell ; not an 


348 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


approach to God, but an interposing of something to keep 
off the weight of his dreaded presence. 

When first we began to understand this, it used to cost 
me many tears. 

“How can it be,” I said one day to Fritz, “that all the 
world seems so utterly to misunderstand God?” 

“There is an enemy in the world,” he said, solemnly, 
“sowing lies about God in every heart.” 

“Yet God is mightier than Satan,” I said; “how is it 
then that no ray penetrates through the darkness from 
fruitful seasons, from the beauty of the spring time, from 
the abundance of the harvest, from the joys of home, to 
show the people that God is love?” 

“Ah, Eva,” he said sadly, “have you forgotten that not 
only is the devil in the world but sin in the heart? He 
lies, indeed, about God, when he persuades us that God 
grudges us blessings; but he tells the truth about us when 
he reminds us that we are sinners, under the curse of the 
good and loving law. The lie would not stand for an instant 
if it were not founded on the truth. It is only by confessing 
the truth, on which his falsehood is based, that we can 
destroy it. We must say to the peasants, ‘Your fear is 
well founded. See on that cross what your sin cost!’ ” 

“But the old religion displayed the cross,” I said. 

“Thank God, it did—it does!” he said. “But, instead 
of the crucifix, we have to tell of a cross from which the 
Crucified is gone; of an empty tomb and a risen Saviour; of 
the curse removed; of God, who gave the Sacrifice, wel- 
' coming back the Sufferer to the throne.” 

We have not made much change in the outward cere¬ 
monies. Only, instead of the sacrifice of the mass, we have 
the feast of the Holy Supper; no elevation of the host, no 
saying of private masses for the dead; and all the prayers, 
thanksgivings, and hymns, in German. 

Dr. Luther still retains the Latin in some of the services 
of Wittenberg, on account of its being a university town, 
that the youth may be trained in the ancient languages. 
He said he would gladly have some of the services in Greek 
and Hebrew, in order thereby to make the study of those 
languages as common as that of Latin. But here in the 
forest, among the ignorant peasants and the knights, who, 
for the most part, forget before old age what little learning 
they acquired in boyhood, Fritz sees no reason whatever for 


THE SCHONBEKG-COTTA FAMILY. 


349 


retaining the ancient langnage; and delightful it is to 
watch the faces of the people when he reads the Bible or 
Luther’s hymns, now that some of them begin to understand 
that the divine service is something in which their hearts 
and minds are to join, instead of a kind of magic external 
rite to be performed for them. 

It is a great delight also to us to visit Chriemhild and 
Ulrich von Gersdorf at the castle. The old knight and 
Dame Hermentrud were very reserved with us at first; but 
the knight has always been most courteous to me, and 
Dame Hermentrud, now that she is convinced we had no 
intention of trenching on her state, receives us very kindly. 

Between us, moreover, there is another tender bond, 
since she has allowed herself to speak of her sister Beatrice, 
to me known only as the subdued and faded aged nun; to 
Dame Hermentrud, and the aged retainers and villagers, 
remembered in her bright, but early blighted, girlhood. 

Again and again I have to tell her sister the story of her 
gradual awakening from uncomplaining hopelessness to a 
lowly and heavenly rest in Christ; and of her meek and 
peaceful death. 

“Great sacrifices,” she said once, “have to be made to 
the honor of a noble lineage, Frau Pastorin. I also have 
had my sorrows;” and she opened a drawer of a cabinet, 
and showed me the miniature portraits of a nobleman and 
his young boy, her husband and son, both in armor. 
“These both were slain in a feud with the family to which 
Beatrice’s betrothed belonged,” she said bitterly. “And 
should our lines ever be mingled in one?” 

“But are these feuds never to die out?” I said. 

“Yes,” she replied sternly, leading me to a window, from 
which we looked on a ruined castle in the distance. “ That 
feud has died out. The family is extinct!” 

“The Lord Christ tells us to forgive our enemies,” I said 
quietly. 

“Undoubtedly,” she replied; “but the Von Bernsteins 
were usurpers of our rights, robbers and murderers. 
Such wrongs must be avenged, or society would fall to 
pieces.” 

Toward the peasants Dame Hermentrud has very conde¬ 
scending and kindly feelings, and frequently gives us food 
and clothing for them, although she still doubts the wis° 
dom of teaching them to read. 


350 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“Every one should be kept in his place,” she says. 

And as yet I do not think she can form any idea of 
heaven, except as of a well organized community, in which 
the spirits of the nobles preside loftily on the heights, 
while the spirits of the peasants keep meekly to the valleys; 
the primary distinction between earth and heaven being, 
that in heaven all will know how to keep in their places. 

And no doubt in one sense she is right. But how would 
she like the order in which places in heaven are assigned? 

“ The first shall he last , and the last first. 

“He that is chief among you , let him he as he that doth 
serve” 

Among the peasants sometimes, on the other hand, Fritz 
is startled by the bitterness of feeling which betrays itself 
against the lords; how the wrongs of generations are treas¬ 
ured up, and the name of Luther is chiefly revered from a 
vague idea that he, the peasant’s son, will set the peasants 
free. 

Ah, when will God’s order be established in the world, 
when each, instead of struggling upward in selfish ambi¬ 
tion, and pressing others down in mean pride—looking up 
to envy, and looking down to scorn—shall look up to honor 
and look down to help! when all shall “by love serve one 
another?” 


September, 1523. 

We have now a guest of whom I scarcely dare to speak 
to Dame Hermentrud. Indeed, the whole history Fritz 
and I will never tell to any here. 

A few days since a worn, gray-haired old man came to 
our house, whom Fritz welcomed as an old friend. It was 
Priest Buprecht Haller, from Franconia. Fritz had told 
me something of his history, so that I knew what he meant, 
when in a quivering voice he said, abruptly, taking Fritz 
aside: 

“Bertha is very ill—perhaps dying. I must never see. 
her any more. She will not suffer it, I know. Can you go 
and speak a few words of comfort to her?” 

Fritz expressed his readiness to do anything in his power, 
and it was agreed thatPriest Buprecht was to stay with us 
that night, and that they were to start together on the 
morrow for the farm where Bertha was at service, which 
lay not many miles off through the forest. 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


351 


But in the night I had a thought, which I determined 
to set going before I mentioned it to Fritz, because he will 
often consent to a thing which is once begun , which he 
would think quite impracticable if it is only proposed; that 
is, especially as regards anything in which I am involved. 
Accordingly, the next morning I rose very early and went 
to our neighbor, Farmer Herder, to ask him to lend us his 
old gray pony for the day, to bring home an invalid. He 
consented, and before we had finished breakfast the pony 
was at the door. 

“ What is this?” said Fritz. 

“It is Farmer Herder’s pony to take me to the farm 
where Bertha lives, and to bring her back,” I said. 

“Impossible, my love,” said Fritz. 

“But you see it is already all arranged, and begun to be 
done,” I said; “I am dressed, and the room is all ready to 
receive her.” 

Priest Ruprecht rose from the table, and moved toward 
me, exclaiming fervently, “God bless you!” Then seem¬ 
ing to fear that he had said what he had no right to say, 
he added, “God bless you for the thought. But it is too 
much!” and he left the room. 

“What would you do, Eva?” Fritz said, looking in 
much perplexity at me. 

“Welcome Bertha as a sister,” I said, “and nurse her 
until she is well.” 

“ But how can I suffer you to be under one roof?” he 
said. 

I could not help my eyes filling with tears. 

“The Lord Jesus suffered such to anoint his feet,” I 
said, “and she, you told me, loves him, has given up all 
dearest to her to keep his words. Let us blot out the past 
as he does, and let her begin life again from our home, if 
God wills it so.” 

Fritz made no further objection. And through the 
dewy forest paths we went, we three; and with us, I think 
we all felt, went Another, invisible, the Good Shepherd of 
the wandering sheep. 

Never did the green glades and forest flowers and solemn 
pines seem to me more fresh and beautiful, and more like 
a holy cathedral than that morning. 

After a little meek resistance Bertha came back with 
Fritz and me. Her sickness seemed to me to be more the 


352 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


decline of one for whom life’s hopes and work are over, 
than any positive disease. And with care, the gray pony 
brought her safely home. 

Never did our dear home seem to welcome us so brightly 
as when we led her back to it, for whom it was to be a 
sanctuary of rest, and refuge from bitter tongues. 

There was a little room over the porch which we had set 
apart as the guest-chamber; and very sweet it was to me 
that Bertha should be its first inmate; very sweet to Fritz 
and me that our home should be what our Lord’s heart is, 
a refuge for the outcast, the penitent, the solitary, and the 
sorrowful. 

Such a look of rest came over her poor, worn face, when 
at last she was laid on her little bed! 

“ I think I shall get well soon,” she said the next morn¬ 
ing, “and then you will let me stay and be your servant; 
when I am strong I can work really hard, and there is 
something in you both which makes me feel this like home.” 

“ We will try,” I said, “to find out what God would have 
ns do.” 

She does improve daily. Yesterday she asked for some 
spinning, or other work to do, and it seems to cheer her 
wonderfully. To-day she has been sitting in our dwelling- 
room with her spinning-wheel. I introduced her to the 
villagers who come in as a friend who has been very ill. 
They do not know her history. 


January, 1524. 

It is all accomplished now. The little guest-chamber 
over the porch *is empty again, and Bertha is gone. 

As she was recovering Fritz received a letter from Priest 
Buprecht, which he read in silence, and then laid aside 
until we were alone on one of our expeditions to the old 
charcoal-burner’s in the forest. 

“Haller wants to see Bertha once more,” he said, dubi¬ 
ously. 

“And why not, Fritz?” I said; “why should not the 
old wrong as far as possible be repaired, and those who 
have given each other up at God’s commandment, be 
given back to each other by his commandment?” 

“I have thought so often, my love,” he said, “but I did 
not know what you would think.” 

So after some little difficulty and delay, Bertha and 


THE SCIWNBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


353 


Priest Ruprecht Haller were married very quietly in our 
village church, and went forth to a distant village in 
Pomerania, by the Baltic Sea, from which Dr. Luther had 
received a request to send them a minister of the Gospel. 

It went to my heart to see the two go forth together 
down the village street, those two whose youth inhuman 
laws and human weakness had so blighted. There was a 
reverence about his tenderness to her, and a wistful lowliness 
in hers for him, which said, “All that thou hast lost for 
me, as far as may be I will make up to thee in the years 
that remain!” 

But as we watched her pale face and feeble steps, and his 
bent, though still vigorous form, Fritz took my hands as 
we turned back into the house, and said: 

“It is well. But it can hardly be for long!” 

And I could not answer him for tears. 

else’s story. 

Wittenberg, August, 1524. 

The slow lingering months of decline are over. Yes¬ 
terday our grandmother died. As I look for the last time 
on the face that had smiled on me from childhood, the 
hands which rendered so many little loving services to me, 
none of which can evermore be returned to her, what a 
sacred tenderness is thrown over all recollection of her, how 
each little act of thoughtful consideration and self-denial 
rushes back on the heart, what love I can see glowing 
through the anxious care which sometimes made her a 
little querulous, especially with my father, although never 
lately. 

Can life ever be quite the same again? Can we ever for¬ 
get to bear tenderly with little infirmities such as those of 
hers, which seem so blameless now, or to prize with a 
thankfulness which would flood with sunshine our little 
cares, the love which must one day be silent to us as she is 
now? 

Her death seems to age us all into another generation! 
She lived from the middle of the old world into the full 
morning of the new; and a whole age of the past seems to 
die with her. But after seeing those Bohemian deputies 
and knowing that Fritz and Eva were married, she ceased 
to wish to live. She had lived, she said, through two 


354 


THE SCEONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


mornings of time on earth, and now she longed for the 
daybreak of heaven. 

But yesterday morning, one of ns; and now one of the 
heavenly host! Yesterday we knew every thought of her 
heart, every detail of her life, and now she is removed into 
a sphere of which we know less than of the daily life of the 
most ancient of the patriarchs. As Dr. Luther says, an 
infant on its mother’s breast has as much understanding of 
the life before it, as we of the life before us after death. 
“Yet,” he saith also, “since God hath made his world of 
earth and sky so fair, how much fairer that imperishable 
world beyond!” 

All seems to me clear and bright after the resurrection; 
but now? where is that spirit now, so familiar to us and so 
dear, and now so utterly separated? 

Dr. Luther said, “A Christian should say, I know that 
it is thus 1 shall journey hence; when my soul goes forth 
charge is given to God’s kings and high princes, who are 
the dear angels, to receive me and convoy me safely home.” 
“The holy Scriptures,” he writes, “teach nothing of pur¬ 
gatory, but tell us that the spirits of the just enjoy the 
sweetest and most delightful peace and rest. How they 
lived there, indeed, we know not, or what the place is 
where they dwell. But this we know assuredly, they are 
in no grief or pain, but rest in the grace of God. As in 
this life they were wont to fall softly asleep in the guard 
and keeping of God and the dear angels, without fear of 
harm, although the devils might prowl around them; so 
after this life do they repose in the hand of God.” 

“ To depart and be with Christ is far better 

“ To-day in paradise with me .” 

“Absent from, the body , at home with the Lord” 

Everything for our peace and comfort concerning those 
who are pure depends on what those words “ with me ” were 
to them and are to us. Where and how they live, indeed, 
we know not; with whom we know. The more then, oh, 
our Saviour and theirs, we know of thee, the more we 
know of them. With thee, indeed, the waiting time be¬ 
fore the resurrection can be no cold drear antechamber of 
the palace. Where thou art, must be light, love, and 
home. 

Precious as Dr. Luther’s own words are, what are they at 
a time like this, compared with the Word of God he has 
unveiled to us? 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


355 


My mother, however, is greatly cheered by these words 
of his, “Our Lord and Saviour grant us joyfully to see 
each other again hereafter. For our faith is sure, and we 
doubt not that we shall see each other again with Christ in 
a little while; since the departure from this life to be with 
Christ is less, in God’s sight, than if I go from you to 
Maiisfeld, or you took leave of me to go from Wittenberg 
to Mansfeld. This is assuredly true. A brief hour of 
sleep and all will be changed.” 

Wittenberg, September, 1524. 

During this month we have been able often to give 
thanks that the beloved feeble form is at rest. The times 
seem very troublous. Dr. Luther thinks most seriously 
of them. Humors have reached us for some time of an 
uneasy feeling among the peasantry. Fritz wrote about 
it from the Thuringian Forest. The peasants, as our good 
elector said lately, have suffered many wrongs from their 
lords; and Fritz says they had formed the wildest hopes of 
better days from Dr. Luther and his words. They thought 
the days of freedom had come. And bitter and hard it is 
for them to learn that the Gospel brings freedom now as 
of old by giving strength to suffer, instead of by suddenly 
redressing wrong. The fanatics, moreover, have been 
among them. The Zwickau prophets and Thomas Miinzer 
(silenced last year at Wittenberg by Luther’s return from 
the Wartburg), have promised them all they actually ex¬ 
pected from Luther. Once more, they say, God is sending 
inspired men on earth, to introduce a new order of things, 
no more to teach the saints how to bow, suffer, and be 
patient; but how to fight and avenge themselves of their 
adversaries, and to reign. 

October, 1524. 

Now, alas, the peasants are in open revolt, rushing 
through the land by tens of thousands. The insurrection 
began in the Black Forest, and now it sweeps throughout 
the land, gathering strength as it advances, and bearing 
everything before it by the mere force of numbers and 
movement. City after city yields and admits them, and 
swears to their Twelve Articles, which in themselves they 
say are not so bad, if only they were enforced by better 
means. Castle after castle is assailed and falls. Ulrich 
writes in burning indignation at the cruel deaths they have 



356 


THE SCHONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


inflicted on noble men and women, and on their pillaging 
the convents. Fritz, on the other hand, writes entreating 
us not to forget the long catalogue of legalized wrongs 
which had led to this moment of fierce and lawless 
vengeance. 

Dr. Luther, sympathizing with the peasants by birth, 
and by virtue of his own quick and generous indignation 
at injustice, while with a prophet’s plainness he blames the 
nobles for their exactions and tyranny, yet sternly demands 
the suppression of the revolt with the s word. He says this 
is essential, if it were only to free the honest and well- 
meaning peasantry from the tyranny of the ambitious and 
turbulent men who compel them to join their banner, on 
pain of death. With a heart that bleeds at every severity, 
lie counsels the severest measures as the most merciful. 
More than once he and others of the Wittenberg doctors 
have succeeded in quieting and dispersing riotous bands of 
the peasants assembled by tens of thousands, with a few 
calm and earnest words. But bitter, indeed, are these 
times to him. The peasants whom he pities and because 
he pities condemns, call out that he has betrayed them, 
and threaten his life. The prelates and princes of the old 
religion declare all this disorder and pillage are only the 
natural consequences of his false doctrine. But between 
them both he goes steadfastly forward speaking faithful 
words to all. More and more, however, as terrible rumors 
reach us of torture, and murder, and wild pillage, he 
seems to become convinced that mercy and vigor are on 
the same side. And now, he whose journey through Ger¬ 
many not three years since was a triumphal procession, has 
to ride secretly from place to place on his errands of peace¬ 
making, in danger of being put to death by the people if 
he were discovered! 

My heart aches for these peasants. These are not the 
Pharisees who were “not blind,” but understood only too 
well what they rejected. They are the “multitudes,” the 
common people, who as of old heard the voice of love and 
truth gladly; for whom dying He pleaded, “ They know 
not what they do.” 

April, 1525. 

The tide has turned. The army of the empire, under 
Truchsess, is out. Philip of Hesse, after quieting his own 
dominions, is come to Saxony to suppress the revolt here. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


357 


Our’own gentle and merciful elector, who so reluctantly 
drew the sword, is, they say, dying. The world is full of 
change! 

Meantime, in our little Wittenberg world, changes are in 
prospect. It seems probable that Dr. Luther, after settling 
the other eight nuns, and endeavoring also to find a home 
for Catherine von Bora, will espouse her himself. A few 
months since, he tried to persuade her to marry Glatz, 
pastor of Orlamund, but she refused. And now it seems 
certain that the solitary Augustinian convent will become 
a home, and that she will make it so. 

Gottfried and I cannot but rejoice. In this world of 
tumult and unrest, it seems so needful that that warm, 
earnest heart should have one place where it can rest, one 
heart that will understand and be true to him if all else 
should become estranged, as so many have. And this, we 
trust, Catherine von Bora will be to him. 

Deserved, and with an innate dignity, which will befit 
the wife of him whom God has called in so many ways to 
be the leader of the hearts of men, she has a spirit which 
will prevent her sinking into the mere reflection of that 
resolute character, and a cheerfulness and womanly tact 
which will, we hope, sustain him through many a depress¬ 
ing hour, such as those who wear earth’s crowns of any 
kind must know. 


December, 1525. 

This year has, indeed, been a year of changes. The 
peasant revolt is crushed. At Frankenhausen, the last 
great victory was gained. Thomas Miinzer was slain, and 
his undisciplined hosts fled in hopeless confusion. The 
revolt is crushed, alas! Gottfried says, as men crush their 
enemies when once in their power, exceeding the crime in 
the punishment, and laying up a store of future revolt and 
vengeance for future generations. 

The good and wise Elector Friedrich died just before the 
victory. It is well, perhaps, that he did not live to see 
the terrible vengeance that has been inflicted, the road¬ 
sides lined with gibbets, torture returned by torture, 
insult by cruel mocking. The poor deluded people, espe¬ 
cially the peasantry, wept for the good elector, and said, 
“Ah, God, have mercy on us! We have lost our father!” 
He used to speak kindly to their children in the fields, and 


358 


THE SCHONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


was always ready to listen to a tale of wrong. He died 
humbly as a Christian; he was buried royally as a prince. 

Shortly before his death, his chaplain, Spalatin, came to 
see him. The elector gave him his hand, and said, “You 
do well to come to me. We are commanded to visit the 
sick.” 

Neither brother nor any near relative was with him when 
he died. The services of all brave men were needed in 
those stormy days. But he was not forsaken. To the 
childless, solitary sufferer, his faithful servants were like a 
family. 

“Oh, dear children,” he said, “I suffer greatly!” 

Then Joachim Sack, one of his household, a Silesian, 
said : 

“Most gracious master, if God will, you will soon be 
better.” 

Shortly after, the dying prince said: 

“Dear children, I am ill indeed.” 

And Sack answered: 

“Gracious lord, the Almighty God sends you all this 
with a Father’s love, and with the best will to you.” 

Then the prince repeated softly, in Latin, the words of 
Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; 
blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

And once more he said: 

“Dear children, I am very ill.” 

And the faithful Joachim comforted him again, “The 
gracious Master, the Almighty God, sends it all to your 
electoral highness from the greatest love.” 

The prince clasped his hands, and said: 

“For that I can trust my good God!” and added, “Help 
me, help me, oh my God.” 

And after receiving the holy communion in both kinds, 
he called his servants around him, and said: 

“Dear children, I entreat you, that in whatever I have 
done you wrong, by word or deed, you will forgive me for 
God’s sake, and pray others to do the same. For we 
princes do much wrong often to poor people that should 
not be.” 

As he spoke thus, all that were in the room could not 
restrain their tears, and seeing that, he said: 

“Dear children, weep not for me. It will not be long 
with me now. But think of me, and pray to God for me.” 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


359 


Spalatin had copied some verses of the Bible for him, 
which he put on his spectacles to read for himself. He 
thought much of Luther, whom, much as he had befriended 
him, he had never spoken to, and sent for him. But it 
was in vain. Luther was on the Hartz mountains, endeav¬ 
oring to quell the peasants’ revolt. That interview is 
deferred to the world where all earthly distinctions are 
forgotten, but where the least Christian services are 
remembered. 

So, “a child of peace,” as one said, “he departed, and 
rests in peace, through the high and only merits of the only 
Son of God,” in whom, in his last testament, he confessed 
was “all his hope.” 

It was a solemn day for Wittenberg when they laid him 
in his grave in the electoral church, which he had once so 
richly provided with relics. His body lying beneath it is 
the most sacred relic it enshrines for us now. 

Knights and burghers met the coffin at the city gate; 
eight noblemen carried it, and a long train of mourners 
passed through the silent streets. Many chanted around 
the tomb the old Latin hymns, “In media vitce ,” and 
“ Si bona suscipimur ,” and also the German, “ From deepest 
need I cry to Thee,” and: 

“ In Fried und Freud falir ich dahin,” 

“ I journey lienee in peace and joy.” 

The money which would, in former times, have purchased 
masses for his soul, was given to the poor. And Dr. 
Luther preached a sermon on the promise, “ Those who 
sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him,” which makes it 
needless, indeed, to pray for the repose of those who thus 
sleep. 

Gretchen asked me in the evening what the hymn meant 
“ I journey hence in peace and joy;” 

I told her it was the soul of the prince that thus journeyed 
hence. 

“The procession was so dark and sad,” she said, “the 
words did not seem to suit.” 

“That procession was going to the grave,” said Thekla, 
who was with us. “There was another procession, which 
we could not see, going to heaven. The lioJy angels, 
clothed in radiant white, were carrying the happy spirit to 


360 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


heaven, and singing, as they went, anthems such as that, 
while we were weeping here.”^: 

“I should like to see that procession of the dear angels, 
Aunt Thekla,” said Gretchen. “Mother says the good 
elector had no little children to love him, and no one to 
call him any tenderer name than ‘Your electoral highness’ 
when he died. But on the other side of the grave he will 
not be lonely, will he? The holy angels will have tender 
names for him there, will they not?” 

“The Lord Jesus will, at all events,” I said. “He 
calleth his own sheep by name.” 

And Gretchen was comforted for the elector. 

Not long after that day of mourning came a day of 
rejoicing to our household, and to all the friendly circle at 
Wittenberg. 

Quietly, in our house, on June the 23d, Dr. Luther and 
Catherine von Bora were married. 

A few days afterward the wedding feast was held on the 
home-bringing of the bride to the Augustinian cloister, 
which, together with “twelve brewings of beer yearly,” 
the good elector John Frederic has given Luther as a wed¬ 
ding present. Brave old John Luther and his wife, and 
Luther’s pious mother came to the feast from Mansfield, 
and a day of much festivity it was to all. 

And now for six months, what Luther calls “that great 
thing, the union and communion between husband and 
wife,” hath hallowed the old convent into a home, while 
the prayer of faith and the presence of Him whom faith 
sees, have consecrated the home into a sanctuary of love 
and peace. 

Many precious things hath Dr. Luther said of marriage. 
God, he says, has set the type of marriage before us 
throughout all creation. Each creature seeks its perfection 
through being blent with another. The very heaven and 
earth picture it to us, for does not the sky embrace the 
green earth as its bride? “Precious, excellent, glorious,” 
he says, “is that word of the Holy Ghost, ‘the heart of the 
husband doth safely trust in her.’ ” 

He says also, that so does he honor the married state 
that before he thought of marrying his Catherine, he had 
resolved, if he should be laid suddenly on his dying bed, to 
be espoused before he died, and to give two silver goblets 
to the maiden as his wedding and dying gifts. And lately 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


361 


he counseled one who was to be married, “Dear friend, do 
thou as I did, when I would take my Kathe. I prayed to 
our Lord God with all my heart. A good wife is a com¬ 
panion of life, and her husband’s solace and joy, and when 
a pious man and wife love each other truly, the devil has 
little power to hurt them.” 

# “All men,” he said, “believe and understand that mar¬ 
riage is marriage, a hand a hand, riches are riches; but to 
believe that marriage is of God, and ordered and appointed 
by God; that the hand is made by God, that wealth and 
all we have and are is given by God, and is to be used as 
his work to his praise, that is not so commonly believed. 
And a good wife,” he said, “should be loved and honored, 
firstly, because she is God’s gift and present; secondly, 
because God has endowed woman with noble and great 
virtues, which, when they are modest, faithful, and believ¬ 
ing, far overbalance their little failings and infirmities.” 

Wittenberg, December, 1525. 

Another year all but closed—a year of mingled storm 
and sunshine! The sorrow we dreaded for our poor Thekla 
is come at last too surely. Bertrand de Crequi is dead! 
He died in a prison alone, for conscience’s sake, but at 
peace in God. A stranger from Flanders brought her a 
few words of farewell in his handwriting, and afterward 
saw him dead, so that she cannot doubt. She seems to 
move about like one walking in a dream, performing every 
common act of life as before, but with the soul asleep. We 
are afraid what will be the end of it. God help her! She 
is now gone for the Christmas to Eva and Fritz. 

Sad divisions have sprung up among the evangelical 
Christians. Dr. Luther is very angry at some doctrines of 
Carlstadt and the Swiss brethren concerning the holy sac¬ 
raments, and says they will be wise above what is written. 
We grieve at these things, especially as our Atlantis has 
married a Swiss, and Dr. Luther will not acknowledge them 
as brethren. Our poor Atlantis is much perplexed, and 
writes that she is sure her husband meaneth not to under¬ 
value the Holy Supper, and that in very truth they find 
their Saviour present there as we do. But Dr. Luther is 
very stern about it. He fears disorders and wild opinions 
will be brought in again, such as led to the slaughter of the 
peasants’ war. Yet he himself is sorely distressed about 


362 


TEE SGEONBEUO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


it, and saith often that the times are so evil the end of the 
world is surely drawing nigh. 

In the midst of all this perplexity, we who love him 
rejoice that he has that quiet home in the Augustei, where 
“ Lord Kathe,” as he calls her, and her little son Hanschen 
reign, and where the dear, holy angels, as Luther says, 
watch over the cradle of the child. It was a festival to all 
Wittenberg when little Hans Luther was born. 

Luther’s house is like the sacred hearth of Wittenberg 
and of all the land. There in the winter evenings he wel¬ 
comes his friends to the cheerful room with the large win¬ 
dow, and sometimes they sing good songs or holy hymns in 
parts, accompanied by the lute and harp, music at which 
Dr. Luther is sure King David would be amazed and 
delighted, could he rise from his grave, “since there can 
have been none so fine in his days.” “ The devil,” he says, 
“always flies from music, especially from sacred music, 
because he is a despairing spirit, and cannot bear joy and 
gladness.” 

And in the summer days he sits under the pear tree in 
his garden, while Kathe works beside him; or he plants 
seeds and makes a fountain; or he talks to her and his 
friends about the wonders of beauty God has set in the 
humblest flowers, and the picture of the resurrection he 
gives us in every delicate twig that in spring bursts from 
the dry brown stems of winter. 

More and more we see what a good wife God has given 
him in Catherine von Bora, with her cheerful, firm, and 
active spirit, and her devoted affection for him. Already 
she has the management of all the finance of the house¬ 
hold, a very necessary arrangement, if the house of Luther 
is not to go to ruin; for Dr. Luther would give every¬ 
thing, even to his clothes and furniture, to any one in dis¬ 
tress, and he will not receive any payment either for his 
books or for teaching the students. 

She is a companion for him, moreover, and not a mere 
listener, which he likes, however much he may laugh at 
her eloquence, “ in her own department surpassing Cicero’s,” 
and sarcastically relate how when first they were married, 
not knowing what to say, but wishing to “make conversa¬ 
tion,” she used to say, as she sat at her work beside him, 
“ Herr Doctor, is not the lord high chamberlain in Prussia 
the brother of the margrave?” hoping that such high dis- 


THE SCHONBERO-COTTA FAMIL Y. 363 

course would not be too trifling for him! He says, indeed, 
that if he were to seek an obedient wife, he would carve 
one for himself out of stone. But the belief among us is, 
that there are few happier homes than Dr. Luther’s; and 
if at any time Catherine finds him oppressed with a sadness 
too deep for her ministry to reach, she quietly creeps out 
and calls Justus Jonas or some other friend to come and 
cheer the doctor. Often, also, she reminds him of the 
letters he has to write; and he likes to have her sitting by 
him while he writes, which is a proof sufficient that she 
can be silent when necessary, whatever jests the doctor 
may make about her “long sermons, which she certainly 
never would have made, if, like other preachers, she had 
taken the precaution of beginning with the Lord’s Prayer!” 

The Christian married life, as he says, “is a humble and 
a holy life,” and well, indeed, is it for our German Refor¬ 
mation that its earthly center is neither a throne, nor a 
hermitage, but a lowly Christian home. 

Parsonage of Gersdorf, June, 1527. 

I am staying with Eva while Fritz is absent making a 
journey of inspection of the schools throughout Saxony 
at Dr. Luther’s desire, with Dr. Philip Melancthon, and 
many other learned men. 

Dr. Luther has set his heart on improving the education 
of the children, and is anxious to have some of the revenues 
of the suppressed convents appropriated to this purpose 
before all are quietly absorbed by the nobles and princes 
for their own uses. 

It is a renewal of youth to me, in my sober middle age to 
be here alone with Eva, and yet not alone. For the terror 
of my youth is actually under our roof with me. Aunt 
Agnes is an inmate of Fritz’s home! During the pillaging 
of the convents and dispersing of the nuns which took 
place in the dreadful peasants’ war, she was driven from 
Nimptschen, and after spending a few weeks with our 
mother at Wittenberg, has finally taken refuge with Eva 
and Fritz. 

But Eva’s little twin children, Heinz and Agnes, will 
associate a very different picture with the name of Aunt 
Agnes from the rigid, lifeless face and voice which used to 
haunt my dreams of a religious life, and make me dread 
the heaven, of whose inhabitants, I was told, Aunt Agnes 
was a type. 


364 THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 

Perhaps the white hair softens the high but furrowed 
brow; yet surely there was not that kindly gleam in the 
grave eyes I remember, or that tender tone in the voice. 
Is it an echo of the voices of the little ones she so dearly 
loves, and a reflection of the sunshine in their eyes? No; 
better than that even, I know, because Eva told me. It is 
the smile and the music of a heart made as that of a little 
child through believing in the Saviour. It is the peace of 
the Pharisee, who has won the publican’s blessing by 
meekly taking the publican’s place. 

I confess, however, I do not think Aunt Agnes’ presence 
improves the discipline of Eva’s household. She is ex¬ 
ceedingly slow to detect any traces of original sin in Eva’s 
children, while to me, on the contrary, the wonder is that 
any creature so good and exemplary as Eva should have 
children so much like other people’s—even mine. One 
would have thought that her infants would have been a 
kind of half angels, taking naturally to all good things, and 
never doing wrong except by mistake in a gentle and mod¬ 
erate way. Whereas, I must say, I hear frequent little 
wails of rebellion from Eva’s nursery, especially at seasons 
of ablution, much as from mine; and I do not think even 
our Fritz ever showed more decided pleasure in mischief, 
or more determined self-will, than Eva’s little rosy Heinz. 

One morning after a rather prolonged little battle be¬ 
tween Heinz and his mother about some case of oppression 
of little Agnes, I suggested to Aunt Agnes: 

“ Only to think that Eva, if she had kept to her voca¬ 
tion, might have attained to the full ideal of the ‘Theo- 
logia Teutsch,’ have become a St. Elizabeth, or indeed far 
better!” 

Aunt Agnes looked up quickly: 

“And you mean to say she is not better now! You im¬ 
agine that spinning meditations all day long is more Chris¬ 
tian work for a woman than training these little ones for 
God, and helping them to fight their first battles with the 
devil!” 

“Perhaps not, Aunt Agnes,” I said, “but then, you see, 
I know nothing of the inside of a convent.” 

“/ do,” said Aunt Agnes emphatically, “and also of the 
inside of a nun’s heart. And I know what wretched work 
we make of it when we try to take our education out of our 
heavenly Father’s hands into our own. Do you think,” 


THE SCnoNBEJlQ-COTTA FAMILY. 365 

she continued, “Eva did not learn more in the long nights 
when she watched over her sick child than she could have 
learned in a thousand self-imposed vigils before any shrine? 
And to-night, when she kneels with Heinz, as she will, and 
says with him, ‘Pray God forgive little Heinz for being 
a cross, naughty,boy to-day,’ and lays him on his pillow, 
and as she watches him fall asleep, asks God to bless and 
train the willful little one, and then asks for pardon her¬ 
self, do you not think she learns more of what forgiveness 
means and ‘Our Father’ than from a year’s study of the 
‘Theologia TeutschV’ ” 

I smiled, and said, “Dear Aunt Agnes, if Fritz wants to 
hear Eva’s praises well sung, I will tell him to suggest to 
you whether it might not have been a higher vocation for 
her to remain a nun!” 

“Ah! child,” said Aunt Agnes, with a little mingling of 
the old sternness and the new tenderness in her voice; “if 
you had learned what I have from those lips, and in this 
house, you could not, even in jest, bear to hear a syllable 
of reflection on either.” 

Indeed, even Aunt Agnes cannot honor this dear home 
more than I do. Open to every peasant who has a sorrow 
or a wrong to tell, it is also linked with the castle; and 
linked to both, not by any class privileges, but because 
here peasants and nobles alike are welcomed as men and 
women, and as Christian brothers and sisters. 

Now and then we pay a visit to the castle, where our 
noble sister Chriemhild is enthroned. But my tastes have 
always been burgher like, and the parsonage suits me 
much better than the castle. Besides, I cannot help feel¬ 
ing some little awe of Dame Hermentrud, especially when 
my two boys are with me, who are apt to indulge in a 
burgher freedom in their demeanor. The furniture and 
arrangements of the castle are a generation behind our own 
at Wittenberg, and I cannot at all make the boys compre¬ 
hend the majesty of the Gersdorf ancestry, nor the neces¬ 
sary inferiority of people who live in streets to those who 
live in isolated rock fortresses. So that I am reduced to 
the Bible law of “honor to gray hairs” to enforce due 
respect to Dame Hermentrud. 

Little Fritz wants to know what the Gersdorf ancestry 
are renowned for. “Was it for learning?” he asked. 

I thought not, as it is only this generation who have 


366 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


learned to read, and the old knight even is suspected of 
having strong reasons for preferring listening to Ulrich’s 
reading to using a book for himself. 

“Was it then for courage?” 

“Certainly, the Gersdorfs had always been brave.” 

“With whom, then, had they fought?” 

“At the time of the Crusades, I believed, against the 
infidels.” 

“And since then?” 

I did not feel sure, but looking at the ruined castle of 
Bernstein and the neighboring height, I was afraid it was 
against their neighbors. 

And so, after much cross questioning, the distinctions of 
the Gersdorf family seemed to be chiefly reduced to their 
having been Gersdorfs, and having lived at Gersdorf for a 
great many hundred years. 

Then Fritz desired to know in what way his cousins, the 
Gersdorfs of this generation, are to distinguish themselves? 
This question also was a perplexity to me, as I know it 
often is to Chriemhild. They must not on any account 
be merchants; and now that in the Evangelical Church the 
great abbeys are suppressed, and some of the bishoprics are 
to be secularized, it is hardly deemed consistent with Gers¬ 
dorf dignity that they should become clergymen. The 
eldest will have the castle. One of them may study civil 
law. For the others nothing seems open but the idling 
dependent life of pages and military attendants in the 
castles of some of the greater nobles. 

If the past is the inheritance of the knights, it seems to 
me the future is far more likely to be the possession of the 
active burgher families. I cannot but feel thankful for the 
lot which opens to our boys honorable spheres of action in 
the great cities of the empire. There seems no room for 
expansion in the life of those petty nobles. While the 
patrician families of the cities are sailing on the broad cur¬ 
rent of the times, encouraging art, advancing learning, 
themselves sharing all the thought and progress of the 
time, these knightly families in the country remain isolated 
in their grim castles, ruling over a few peasants, and fet¬ 
tered to a narrow local circle, while the great current of 
the age sweeps by them. 

Gottfried says, narrow and ill-used privileges always end 
in ruining those who bigotedly cling to them. The exclu- 


THE SCHONBEKG-COTTA FAMILY. 


367 


siveness which begins with shutting others ont, commonly 
ends in shutting the exclusive in. The lordly fortress 
becomes the narrow prison. 

All these thoughts passed through my mind as I left the 
rush-strewn floor of the hall where Dame Hermentrud had 
received me and my boys, with a lofty condescension, 
while, in the course of the interview, I had heard her 
secretly remarking to Chriemhild how unlike the cousins 
were; “it was quite singular how entirely the Gersdorf 
children were unlike the Cottas.” 

But it was not until I entered Eva’s lowly home, that I 
detected the bitter root of wounded pride from which my 
deep social speculations sprang. I had been avenging my¬ 
self on the Schonberg-Gersdorf past by means of the Cotta- 
Reichenbach* future. Yes; Fritz and Eva’s lowly home is 
nobler than Chrifemhild’s, and richer than ours; richer and 
nobler just in as far as it is more lowly and more Christian! 

And I learned my lesson after this manner. 

“Dame Hermentrud is very proud,” I said to Eva, as I 
returned from the castle and sat down beside her in the 
porch, where she was sewing; “and I really cannot see on 
what ground.” 

Eva made no reply, but a little amused smile played 
about her mouth, which for the moment rather aggravated 
me. 

“Do you mean to say she is not proud, Eva?” I con¬ 
tinued controversially. 

“I did not mean to say that any one was not proud,” 
said Eva. 

“ Did you mean then to imply that she has anything to 
he proud of?” 

“There are all the ghosts of all the Gersdorfs,” said 
Eva; “and there is the high ancestral privilege of wearing 
velvet and pearls, which you and I dare not assume.” 

“Surely,” said I, “the privilege of possessing Lucas 
Cranach’s pictures, and Albrecht Durer’s carvings; is bet¬ 
ter than that.” 

“Perhaps it is,” said Eva demurely; “perhaps wealth is 
as firm ground for pride to build on as ancestral rank. 
Those who have neither, like Fritz and I, may be the most 
candid judges.” 

I laughed, and felt a cloud pass from my heart. Eva 
bad dared to call the sprite which vexed me by his right 


368 THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 

name, and like any other gnome or cobold, he vanished 
instantly. 

Thank God onr Eva is Cousin Eva again, instead of 
Sister Ave; that her single heart is here among ns to flash 
the light on our consciences just by shining, instead of 
being hidden under a saintly canopy in the shrine of some 
distant convent. 

July, 1527. t 

Fritz is at home. It was delightful to see what a festi¬ 
val his return was, not only in the home, but in the village 
—the children running to the doors to receive a smile, the 
mothers stopping in their work to welcome him. The 
day after his return was Sunday. As usual, the children 
of the village were assembled at five o’clock in the morning 
to church. Among them were our boys, and Chriemhild’s, 
and Eva’s twins, Heinz and Agnes—rosy, merry children 
of the forest as they are. All, however, looked as good 
and sweet as if they had been children of Eden, as they 
tripped that morning after each other over the village 
green, their bright littl. forms passing in and out of the 
shadow of the great beech tree which stands opposite the 
church. 

The little company all stood together in the church 
before the altar, while Fritz stood on the step and taught 
them. At first they sang a hymn, the elder boys in Latin, 
and then altogether in German; and then Fritz heard 
them say Luther’s Catechism. How sweetly the lisping, 
childish voices answered his deep, manly voice; like the 
rustling of countless summer leaves outside, or the fall of 
the countless tiny cascades of the village stream in the 
still summer morning. 

“My dear child, what art thou?” he said. 

Answered from the score of little hushed, yet ringing 
voices: j 

“I am a Christian.” 

“How dost thou know that?” 

“Because I am baptized, and believe on my dear Lord 
Jesus Christ.” 

“ What is it needful that a Christian should know for 
his salvation?” 

Answer—“The Catechism.” 

And afterward, in the part concerning the Christian 
faith, the sweet voices repeated the Creed in German. 


TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


369 


“I believe in God the Father Almighty.” 

And Fritz’s voice asked gently: 

“ What does that mean?” 

Answer —“I believe that God has created me and all 
creatures; has given me body and soul, eyes, ears, and all 
my limbs, reason, and all my senses, and still preserves 
them to me; and that he has also given me my clothes and 
my shoes, and whatsoever I eat or drink; that richly and 
daily he provides me with all needful nourishment for body 
and life, and guards me from all danger and evil; and all 
this out of pure fatherly divine goodness and mercy, with¬ 
out any merit or deserving of mine. And for all this I am 
bound to thank and praise him, and also to serve and obey 
him. This is certainly true.” 

Again: 

“I believe in Jesus Christ,” etc. 

“What does that mean?” 

“I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the 
Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Vir¬ 
gin Mary, is my Lord who has redeemed me, a lost and 
condemned human creature, has purchased and won me 
from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil, 
not with silver and gold, but with his own holy, precious 
blood, and with his innocent suffering and dying, that 
I may be his own, and live in his kingdom under him, and 
serve him in endless righteousness, innocence, and blessed¬ 
ness, even as he is risen from the dead, and lives and reigns 
forever. This is certainly true.” 

And again: 

“I believe in the Holy Ghost.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“I believe that not by my own reason or power can I 
believe on Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him; but the 
Holy Ghost has called me through the Gospel, enlightened 
me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the right 
faith, as he calls all Christian people on earth, gathers, en¬ 
lightens, sanctifies them, and through Jesus keeps them 
in the right and only faith, among which Christian people 
he daily richly forgives all sins, to me and all believers, 
and at the last day will awaken me and all the dead, and 
to me and all believers in Christ will give eternal life. 
This is certainly true.” 

And again, on the Lord’s Prayer, the children’s voices 

began; 


370 


THE SGHONBERO-COTTA FAMILY. 


“Our Father who art in heaven.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“ God will in this way sweetly persuade us to believe 
that he is our true Father, and that we are his true chil¬ 
dren; that cheerfully and with all confidence we may ask 
of him as dear children ask of their dear fathers.” 

And at the end: 

“What does Amen mean?” 

“ That I should be sure such prayers are acceptable to 
the Father in heaven, and granted by him, for he himself 
has taught us thus to pray, and promised that he will hear 
us. Amen, amen—that means, Yes, yes, that shall he 
done.” 

And when it was asked: 

“Who receives the holy sacrament worthily?” 

Softly came the answer: 

“ He is truly and rightly prepared who has faith in these 
words, ‘Given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of 
sins.’ But he who doubts or disbelieves these words, is 
unworthy and unprepared; for the words, ‘for you ,’ need 
simple believing hearts.” 

As I listened to the simple living words, I could not 
wonder that Dr. Luther often repeats them to himself, or 
rather, as he says, “to God,” as an antidote to the fiery 
darts of the wicked one. 

And so the childish voices died away in the morning 
stillness of the church, and the shadows of the columns 
fell silently across the grassy mounds or wooden crosses, 
beneath which rest the village dead; and as we went home, 
the long shadow of the beech tree fell on the dewy village 
green. 

Then, before eleven o’clock, the church bell began to 
ring, and the peasants came trooping from the different 
clearings of the forest. One by one we watched the vari¬ 
ous groups in their bright holiday dresses, issuing out of 
the depths of dark green shade, among them, doubtless, 
many a branch of the Luther family who live in this 
neighborhood. Afterward each door in the village poured 
out its contributions, and soon the little church was full, 
the men and women seated on the opposite sides of the 
church, and the aged gathered around the pulpit. Fritz’s 
text was Eva’s motto, “ God so loved the world.” Simply, 
with illustrations such as they could understanad, he spoke 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


371 


to them of God’s infinite love, and the infinite cost at 
which he had redeemed us, and of the love and trust and 
obedience we owe him, and, according to Dr. Luther’s 
advice, he did not speak too long, but “ called black black, 
and white white, keeping to one simple subject, so that 
the people may go away and say, ‘The sermon was about 
this .’” For, as I heard Dr. Luther say, “We must not 
speak to the common people of high, difficult things, or 
with mysterious words. To the church come little chil¬ 
dren, maid-servants, old men and women, to whom high 
doctrine teaches nothing. For, if they say about it, ‘Ah, 
he said excellent things, he has made a fine sermon!’ And 
one asks, ‘What about, then?’ they reply, ‘I know not.’ 
Let us remember what pains our Lord Christ took to 
preach simply. From the vineyard, from the sheepfold, 
from trees, he drew his illustrations, all that the people 
might feel and understand.” 

That sermon of Fritz’s left a deep rest in my heart. He 
spoke not of justification, and redemption merely, but ol 
God redeeming and justifying us. Greater service can 
no one render us than to recall to us what God has don6 
for us, and how he really and tenderly cares for us. 

In the afternoon, the children were gathered for a little 
while in the schoolroom, and questioned about the sermon. 
At sunset again we all met for a short service in the church, 
and sang evening hymns in German, after which the pastor 
pronounced the benediction, and the little community 
scattered once more to their various homes. 

With the quiet sunshine, and the light shed on the home 
by Fritz’s return, to-day seemed to me almost like a day 
in paradise. 

Thank God again and again for Dr. Luther, and especi¬ 
ally for these two great benefits given back to us through 
him—first, that he has unsealed the fountain of God’s 
Word from the icy fetters of the dead language, and sent 
it flowing through the land, everywhere wakening winter 
into spring; and secondly, that he has vindicated the 
sancitity of marriage and the home life it constitutes; 
unsealing the grave-stones of the convent gates, and send¬ 
ing forth the religion entranced and buried there, to bless 
the world in a thousand lowly, holy, Christian homes such 
as this. 


372 TEE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 

thekla’s story. 

Wittenberg, September, 1527. 

I haye said it from my heart at last! yes, I am sure 1 
say it from my heart, and if with a broken heart, God will 
not despise that. 

“ Our father which art in heaven, thy will , not mine he 
done .” 

I thought I could bear anything better than suspense; 
but I had no idea what a blank of despair the certainty 
would bring. 

Then came dreadful rebellious thoughts, that God should 
let him die alone! and then recurred to my heart all they 
had said to me about not making idols, and I began to fear 
I had never really loved or worshiped God at all, but only 
Bertrand; and then came a long time of blank and dark¬ 
ness into which no light of human or divine love or voices 
of comfort seemed in the least to penetrate. I thought 
God would never receive me until I could say, “Thy will 
be done,” and this I could not say. 

The first words I remember that seemed to convey any 
meaning to me at all, were some of Dr. Luther’s in a ser¬ 
mon. He said it was easy to believe in God’s pardoning 
love in times of peace, but in times of temptation when 
the devil assailed the soul with all his fiery darts, he him¬ 
self found it hard, indeed, to hold to the truth he knew so 
well, that Christ was not a severe judge, or a hard exacter, 
but a forgiving Saviour, indeed love itself, pure unalterable 
love. 

Then I began to understand it was the devil, the malig¬ 
nant, exacting evil spirit that I had been listening to in the 
darkness of my heart, that it was he who had been per¬ 
suading me I must not dare to go to my Father, before I 
could bring him a perfectly submissive heart. 

And then I remembered the words, “ Come unto me, ye 
that are weary and heavy laden;” and, alone in my room, 
T fell on my knees, and cried, “Oh blessed Saviour, oh 
heavenly Father, I am not submissive; but I am weary, 
weary and heavy laden; and I come to thee. Wilt thou 
take me as I am, and teach me in time to say, ‘Thy will be 
done?’ ” And he received me, and in time he has taught 
me. At least I can say so to-night. To-morrow, perhaps, 
the old rebellion will come back. But if it does, I will go 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


373 


again to onr heavenly Father and say again, “Not sub¬ 
missive yet, only heavy laden! Father, take my hand, and 
say, begin again!” 

Because amid all these happy homes I felt so unnecessary 
to any one, and so unutterably lonely. I longed for the 
old convents to bury myself in, away from all joyous sounds. 
But, thank God, they were closed for me; and I do not 
wish for them now. 

Dr. Luther began to help me by showing me how the 
devil had been keeping me from God. 

And now God has helped me by sending through my 
heart again a glow of thankfulness and love. 

The plague has been at Wittenberg again. Dr. Luther’s 
house has been turned into a hospital; for dear as are his 
Kathe and his little Hans to him he would not flee from 
the danger, any more than years ago, when he was a monk 
in the convent which is now his home. 

And what a blessing his strong and faithful words have 
been among us, from the pulpit, by the dying bed, or in 
the house of mourning. 

But it is through my precious mother that God has 
spoken to my heart, and made me feel he does indeed sus¬ 
tain, and care, and listen. She was so nearly gone. And 
now she is recovering. They say the danger is over. And 
never more will I say in my heart, “ To me only God gives 
no home,” or fear to let my heart entwine too closely 
round those God has left me to love, because of the anguish 
when that clasp is severed. I will take the joy and the 
love with all its possibilities of sorrow, and trust in God for 
both. 

Perhaps, also, God may have some little work of love 
for me to do, some especial service even for me, to make 
me needed in the world as long as I am here. For to-day 
Justus Jonas, who has lost his little son in the plague, 
came to me and said: 

“ Thekla, come and see my wife. She says you can com¬ 
fort her, for you can comprehend sorrow.” 

Of course I went. I do not think I said anything to 
comfort her. I could do little else but weep with her, as I 
looked on the little, innocent, placid, lifeless face. But 
when I left her, she said I had done her good, and begged 
me to come again. 

So, perhaps, God has some blessed services for me to 


374 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


render him, which I could only have learned as he has 
taught me; and when we meet hereafter, Bertrand and I, 
and hear that dear divine and human voice that has led us 
through the world, we together shall he glad of all this 
hitter pain that we endured and felt, and give thanks for 
it forever and forever! 


PART XX. 
else’s story. 

Wittenberg, May, 1520. 

Of all the happy homes God has given to Germany 
through Dr. Luther, I think none are happier than his 
own. 

The walls of the Augustine convent echo now with the 
pattering feet and ringing voices of little children, and 
every night the angels watch over the sanctuary of a home. 
The birthdays of Dr. Luther’s children are festivals to us 
all, and more especially the birthday of little Hans the 
first-born was so. 

Yet death also has been in that bright home. Their 
second child, a babe, Elizabeth, was early taken from her 
parents. Dr. Luther grieved over her much. A little 
while after her death he wrote to his friend Hausmann: 

“ Grace and peace. My Johannulus thanks thee, best Nic¬ 
holas, for the rattle, in which he glories and rejoices won- 
drously. 

“ I have begun to write something about the Turkish 
war, which will not, I hope, be useless. 

“ My little daughter is dead; my darling little Elizabeth. 
It is strange how sick and wounded she has left my heart, 
almost as tender as a woman’s, such pity moves me for 
that little one. I never could have believed before what 
is the tenderness of a father’s heart for his children. Do 
thou pray to the Lord for me, in whom fare-thee-well.” 

Catherine von Bora is honored and beloved by all. Some 
indeed complain of her being too economical; but what 
would become of Dr. Luther and his family if she were as 
reckless in giving as he is? He has been known even to 
take advantage of her illness to bestow his plate on some 
needy student. He never will receive a kreuzer from the 



TEE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


375 


students he teaches; and he refuses to sell his writings, 
which provokes both Gottfried and me, noble as it is of 
him, because the great profits they bring would surely be 
better spent by Dr. Luther than by the printers who get 
them now. Our belief is, that were it not for Mistress 
Luther, the whole household would have long since been 
reduced to beggary, and Dr. Luther, who does not scruple 
to beg of the elector or of any wealthy person for the needs 
of others (although never for his own), knows well how 
precarious such a livelihood is. 

His wife does not, however, always succeed in restraining 
his propensities to give everything awav. Not long ago, 
in defiance of her remonstrating looks, in her presence he 
bestowed on a student who came to him asking money to 
help him home from the university, a silver goblet which 
had been presented to him, saying that he had no need to 
drink out of silver. 

We all feel the tender care with which she watches over 
his health, a gift to the whole land. His strength has 
never quite recovered the strain on it during those years of 
conflict and penance in the monastery at Erfurt. And it 
is often strained to the utmost now. All the monks and 
nuns who have renounced their idle maintenance in con¬ 
vents for conscience’s sake; all congregations that desire an 
evangelical pastor; all people of all kinds in trouble of 
mind, body, or estate, turn to Dr. Luther for aid or coun¬ 
sel, as to the warmest heart and the clearest head in the 
land. His correspondence is incessant, embracing and 
answering every variety of perplexity, from counseling 
evangelical princes how best to reform their states, to 
directions to some humble Christian woman how to find 
peace for her conscience in Christ. And besides the count¬ 
less applications to him for advice, his large heart seems 
always at leisure to listen to the appeal of the persecuted 
far and near, or to the cry of the bereaved and sorrowful. 

Where shall we find the spring of all this activity but in 
the Bible , of which he says, “ There are few trees in that 
garden which I have not shaken for fruit;” and in prayer, 
of which he, the busiest man in Christendom (as if he were 
a contemplative hermit), says “Prayer is the Christian’s 
business (Das Gebet est des Christen Handwerk).” 

Yet, it is the leisure he makes for prayer which gives 
him leisure for all besides. It is the hours passed with the 


376 THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

life-giving Word ■which makes sermons, and correspond¬ 
ence, and teaching of all kinds to him simply the out¬ 
pouring of a full heart. 

Yet such a life wears out too quicky. More than once 
has Mistress Luther been in sore anxiety about him during 
the four years they have been married. 

Once, in 1527, when little Hans was the baby, and he 
believed he should soon have to leave her a widow with the 
fatherless little one, he said rather sadly he had nothing to 
leave her but the silver tankards which had been presented 
to him. 

“Dear doctor,” she replied, “if it be God’s will, then I 
also choose that you be with him rather than with me. It 
is not so much I and my child even that need you as the 
multitude of pious Christians. Trouble yourself not 
about me.” 

What her courageous hopefulness and her tender watch¬ 
fulness have been to him, he showed when he said: 

“I am too apt to expect more from my Kathe, and from 
Melancthon, than I do from Christ my Lord. And yet I 
well know that neither they nor any one on earth has 
suffered, or can suffer, what he hath suffered for me.” 

But although incessant work may weigh upon his body, 
there are severer trials which weigh upon his spirit. The 
heart so quick to every touch of affection or pleasure can¬ 
not but be sensitive to injustice or disappointment. It 
cannot therefore be easy for him to bear that at one time it 
should be perilous for him to travel on account of the 
indignation of the nobles, whose relatives he has rescued 
from nunneries; and at another time equally unsafe 
because of the indignation of the peasants, for whom, 
though he boldly and openly denounced their mad insur¬ 
rection, he pleads fervently with nobles and princes. 

But bitterer than all other things to him, are the divi¬ 
sions among evangelical Christians. Every truth he be¬ 
lieves flashes on his mind with such overwhelming convic¬ 
tion, that it seems to him nothing but incomprehensible 
willfulness for any one else not to see it. Every conviction 
he holds, he holds with the grasp of one ready to die for it 
—not only with the tenacity of possession, but of a soldier 
to whom its defense has been intrusted. He would not, 
indeed, have any put to death or imprisoned for their mis¬ 
belief. But hold out the hand of fellowship to those who 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


377 


betray any part of his Lord’s trust, he thinks, how dare 
he? Are a few peaceable days to be purchased at the sac¬ 
rifice of eternal truth? 

And so the division has taken place between us and the 
Swiss. 

My Gretchen perplexed me the other day, when we 
were coming from the city church, where Dr. Luther had 
been preaching against the Anabaptists aud the Swiss, 
whom he will persist in classing together, by saying: 

“Mother, is not Uncle Winkelried a Swiss, and is he not 
a good man?” 

“Of course Uncle Conrad is a good man, Gretchen,” 
rejoined our Fritz, who had just returned from a visit to 
Atlantis and Conrad. “How can you ask such questions?” 

“But he is a Swiss, and Dr. Luther said we must take 
care not to be like the Swiss, because they say wicked 
things about the holy sacraments.” 

“I am sure Uncle Conrad does not say wicked things,” 
retorted Fritz, vehemently. “ I think he is almost the best 
man I ever saw. Mother,” he continued, “why does Dr. 
Luther speak so of the Swiss?” 

“You see, Fritz,” I said, “Dr. Luther never stayed six 
months among them as you did; and so he has never seen 
how good they are at home.” 

“Then,” rejoined Fritz, sturdily, “if Dr. Luther has not 
seen, I do not think he should speak so of them.” 

I was driven to have recourse to maternal authority to 
close the discussion, reminding Fritz that he was a little 
boy, and could not pretend to judge of good and great men 
like Dr. Luther. But, indeed, I could not help half agree¬ 
ing with the child. It was impossible to make him under¬ 
stand how Dr. Luther has fought his way inch by inch to 
the freedom in which we now stand at ease; how he detests 
the Zwinglian doctrines, not so much for themselves, as 
for what he thinks they imply. How will it be possible to 
make our children, who enter on the peaceful inheritance 
so dearly won, understand the rough, soldierly vehemence, 
of the warrior race, who reconquered that inheritance for 
them? 

As Dr. Luther says, “ It is not a little thing to change 
the whole religion and doctrine of the papacy. How hard 
it has been to me, they will see in that Day. Now no one 
believes it!” 


378 


THE SCHONBELIG-COTTA FAMILY. 


God appointed David to fight the wars of Israel, and 
Solomon to build the temple. Dr. Luther has had to do 
both. What wonder if the hand of the soldier can some¬ 
times be traced in the work of peace! 

Yet, why should I perplex myself about this? Soon, 
too soon, death will come, and consecrate the virtues of 
our generation to our children, and throw a softening veil 
over our mistakes. 

Even now that Dr. Luther is absent from us at Coburg, 
in the castle there, how precious his letters are; and how 
doubly sacred the words preached to us last Sunday from 
the pulpit, now that to-morrow we are not to hear him. 

He is placed in the castle at Coburg, in order to be 
nearer the Diet at Augsburg, so as to aid Dr. Melancthon, 
who is there, with his counsel. The elector dare not trust 
the royal heart and straightforward spirit of our Luther 
among the prudent diplomatists at the Diet. 

Mistress Luther is having a portrait taken of their little 
Magdalen, who is now a year old, and especially dear to 
the doctor, to send to him in the fortress. 


June, 1530. 

Letters have arrived from and about Dr. Luther. His 
father is dead—the brave, persevering, self-denying, truth¬ 
ful old man, who had stamped so much of his own character 
on his son. “It is meet I should mourn such a parent,” 
Luther writes, “who through the sweat of his brow had 
nurtured and educated me, and made me what I am.” He 
felt it keenly, especially since he could not be with his 
father at the last; although he gives thanks that he lived 
in these times of light, and departed strong in the faith of 
Christ. Dr. Luther’s secretary writes, however, that the 
portrait of his little Magdalen comforts him much. He 
has hung it on the wall opposite to the place where he sits 
at meals. 

Dr. Luther is now the eldest of his race. He stands in 
the foremost rank of the generations slowly advancing to 
confront death. 

To-day I have been sitting with Mistress Luther in the 
garden behind the Augustei, under the shade of the pear 
tree, where she so often sits beside the doctor. Our chil¬ 
dren were playing around us—her little Hanschen with the 
boys, while the little Magdalen sat cooing like a dove over 


THE SCHONBERQ-GOTTA FAMILY. 379 

some flowers, which she was pulling to pieces on the grass 
at our feet. 

She talked to me much about the doctor; how dearly 
he loves the little ones, and what lessons of divine love 
and wisdom he learns from their little plays. 

He says often, that beautiful as all God’s works are, 
little children are the fairest of all; that the dear angels 
especially watch over them. He is very tender with them, 
and says sometimes they are better theologians than he is, 
for they trust God. Deeper prayers and higher theology 
he never hopes to reach than the first the little ones learn 
—the Lord’s Prayer and the Catechism. Often, she said, 
he says over the Catechism, to remind himself of all the 
treasures of faith we possess. 

It is delightful too, she says, to listen to the heavenly 
theology he draws from birds and leaves and flowers, and 
the commonest gifts of God or events of life. At table, a 
dish of fruit will open to him a whole volume of God’s 
bounty, on which he will discourse. Or, taking a rose in 
his hand, he will say, “A man who could make one rose like 
this would be accounted most wonderful; and God scatters 
countless such flowers around us! But the very infinity 
of his gifts makes us blind to them.” 

And one evening, he said of a little bird, warbling its 
last little song before it went to roost, “Ah, dear little 
bird! he has chosen his shelter, and is quietly rocking him¬ 
self to sleep, without a care for to-morrow’s lodging; 
calmly holding by his little twig, and leaving God to think 
for him.” 

In spring he loves to direct her attention to the little 
points and tufts of life peeping everywhere from the brown 
earth or the bare branches. “Who,” he said, “that had 
never witnessed a spring-time would have guessed, two 
months since, that these lifeless branches held concealed 
all that hidden power of life? It will be thus with us at 
the resurrection. God writes his gospel, not in the Bible 
alone, but in trees, and flowers, and clouds, and stars.” 

And thus to Mistress Luther that little garden, with his 
presence and his discourse, has become like an illuminated 
Gospel and Psalter. 

I ventured to ask her some questions, and, among others, 
if she had ever heard him speak of using a form of words 
in prayer. She said she had once heard him say “ we 


380 


THE SCHONBEUQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


might use forms of words in private prayer until the wings 
and feathers of our souls are grown, that we may soar 
freely upward into the pure air of God’s presence.” But 
his prayers, she says, are sometimes like the trustful plead¬ 
ings of his little boy Hauschen with him; and sometimes 
like the wrestling of a giant in an agony of conflict. 

She said, also, that she often thanks God for the doc¬ 
tor’s love of music. When his mind and heart have been 
strained to the utmost, music seems to be like a bath of 
pure fresh water to his spirit, bracing and resting it at once. 

I indeed have myself heard him speak of this, when I 
have been present at the meetings he has every week at his 
house for singing in parts. “The devil,” he says—“that 
lost spirit—cannot endure sacred songs of joy. Our pas¬ 
sions and impatiences, our complainings and our cryings, 
our Alas! and our Woe is me! please him well; but our 
songs and psalms vex him and grieve him sorely.” 

Mistress Luther told me she had many an anxious hour 
about the doctor’s health. He is often so sorely pressed 
with work and care; and he has never recovered the weak¬ 
ening effects of his early fasts and conflicts. 

His tastes and habits at table are very abstemious. His 
favorite dishes are herrings and pease-soup; and when 
engrossed with any especial work, he would forget or go 
without his meals altogether if she did not press him to 
take them. When writing his Commentary on the 
Twenty-second Psalm, he shut himself up for three days 
with nothing but bread and salt; until, at last, she had to 
send for a locksmith to break open the door, when they 
found him absorbed in meditation. 

And yet, with all his deep thoughts and his wide cares, 
like a king’s or an archbishop’s, lie enters into his chil¬ 
dren’s games as if he were a boy; and never fails, if he is 
at a fair on his travels, to bring the little ones home some 
gift for a fairing. 

She showed me a letter she had just received from him 
from Coburg, for his little son Hanschen. She allowed me 
to copy it. It was written thus: 

“ Grace and peace in Christ to my heartily dear little 
son. I see gladly that thou learnest well and prayest 
earnestly. Do thus, my little son, and go on. When I 
come home I will bring thee a beautiful fairing. I know 
a pleasant garden, wherein many children walk about. 


THE SCIIONBKUO-GOTTA FAMILY. 


381 


They have little golden coats, and pick np beantiful apples 
under the trees, and pears, cherries and plums. They 
dance and are merry, and have also beautiful little ponies, 
with golden reins and silver saddles. Then I asked the 
man whose the garden is, whose children those were. He 
said, ‘These are the children who love to pray, who learn 
their lessons, and are good.’ Then I said, ‘Dear man, I 
also have a little son; he is called Hansichen Luther. 
Might not he also come into the garden, that he might eat 
such apples and pears, and ride on such beautiful little 
ponies, and play with these children?’ Then the man 
said, ‘If he loves to pray, learns his lessons, and is good, 
he also shall come into the garden—Lippus and Tost also 
(the little sons of Melancthon and Justus Jonas); and 
when they all come together, they also shall have pipes, 
drums, lutes, and all kinds of music; and shall dance, and 
shoot with little hows and arrows. ’ 

“ And he showed me there a fair meadow in the garden, 
prepared for dancing. There were many pipes of pure 
gold, drums, and silver bows and arrows. But it was still 
early in the day, so that the children had not had their 
breakfast. Therefore I could not wait for the dancing, 
and said to the man, ‘Ah, dear sir, I will go away at once, 
and write all this to my little son Hansichen, that he may 
be sure to pray and to learn well, and be good, that he also 
may come into this garden. But he has a dear aunt, 
Lena; he must bring her with him.’ Then said the man, 
‘Let it be so; go and write him thus.’ 

“ Therefore, my dear little son Hansichen, learn thy 
lessons, and pray with a cheerful heart; and tell all this to 
Lippus and Justus too, that they also may learn their 
lessons and pray. So shall you all come together into this 
garden. Herewith I commend you to the Almighty God; 
and greet Aunt Lena, and give her a kiss from me. Thy 
dear father, Martin Luther.” 

Some who have seen this letter say it is too trifling for 
such serious subjects. But heaven is not a grim and aus¬ 
tere, but a most bright and joyful place; and Dr. Luther 
is only telling the child in his own childish language what 
a happy place it is. Does not God our heavenly Father do 
even so with us? 

I should like to have seen Dr. Luther turn from his 


382 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


grave letters to princes and doctors abont the great Augs¬ 
burg Confession, which they are now preparing, to write 
these loving words to his little Hans. No wonder Cath¬ 
erine Lutherin, Doctress Lnther, mea dominus Ketha, “my 
lord Kathe,” as he calls her, is a happy woman. Happy 
for Germany that the Catechism in which our children 
learn the first elements of divine truth, grew out of the 
fatherly heart of Luther, instead of being put together by 
a diet or a general council. 

One more letter I have copied, because my children were 
so interested in it. Dr. Luther finds at all times great 
delight in the songs of birds. The letter I have copied 
was written on the 28th April, to his friends who meet 
around his table at home. 

“Grace and peace in Christ, dear sirs and friends! I 
have received all your letters, and understand how things 
are going on with you. That you, on the other hand, 
may understand how things are going on here, I would 
have you know that we, namely, I, Master Veit, and 
Cyriacus, are not going to the Diet at Augsburg. We 
have, however, another diet of our own here. 

“Just under our window there is a grove like a little 
forest, where the choughs and crows have convened a diet, 
and there is such a riding hither and thither, such an 
incessant tumult, day and night, as if they were all merry, 
and mad with drinking. Young and old chatter together, 
until I wonder how their breath can hold out so long. I 
should like to know if any of those nobles and cavaliers are 
with you; it seems to me they must be gathered here out 
of the whole world. 

“ I have not yet seen their emperor, but their great peo¬ 
ple are always strutting and prancing before our eyes, not, 
indeed, in costly robes, but all simply clad in one uniform, 
all alike black, and all alike gray-eyed, all singing one song, 
only with the most amusing varieties between young and 
old, and great and small. They are not careful to have a 
great palace and hall of assembly, for their hall is vaulted 
with the beautiful, broad sky, their floor is the field, strewn 
with fair, green branches, and their walls reach as far as 
the ends of the world. Neither do they require steeds and 
armor; they have feathered wheels with which they fly 
from shot and danger. They are, doubtless, great and 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 383 

mighty lords, but what they are debating I do not yet 
know. 

“As far, however, as I understand through an inter¬ 
preter, they are planning a great foray and campaign 
against the wheat, barley, oats, and all kinds of grain, and 
many a knight will win his spurs in this Avar, and many a 
brave deed will be done. 

“ Thus we sit here in our diet, and hear and listen with 
great delight, and learn how the princes and lords, with all 
the other estates of the empire, sing and live so merrily. 
But our especial pleasure is to see how cavalierly they pair 
about, whet their beaks, and furbish their armor, that 
they may win glory and victory from wheat and oats. We 
wish them health and wealth, and that they may all at 
once be impaled on a quickset hedge! 

“For I hold they are nothing better than sophists and 
papists with their preaching and Avriting; and I should 
like to have these also before me in our assembly, that I 
might hear their pleasant voices and sermons, and see what 
a useful people they are to devour all that is on the face 
of the earth, and afterward chatter no one knows how long! 

“To-day we have heard the first nightingale, for they 
would not trust April. We have had delightful weather 
here, no rain, except a little yesterday. With you, per¬ 
haps, it is otherwise. Herewith I commend you to God. 
Keep house well. Given from the Diet of the grain- 
Turks, the 28th of April, anno 1530. 

“Martihus Luther.” 

Yet, peaceful and at leisure as he seems, Gottfried says 
the whole of Germany is bearing now once more on the 
strength of that faithful heart. 

The Roman diplomatists again and again have all but 
persuaded Melancthon to yield everything for peace; and, 
but for the firm and faithful words which issue from “this 
wilderness,” as Luther calls the Coburg fortress, Gottfried 
believes all might have gone Avrong. Severely and mourn¬ 
fully has Dr. Luther been constrained to write more than 
once to “ Philip Pusillanimity,” demanding that at least he 
should not give up the doctrine of justification by faith, 
and abandon all to the decision of bishops! 

It is faith Avhich gives Luther this clearness of vision. 
“It is God’s word and cause,” he writes, “therefore our 


384 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


prayer is certainly heard, and already he has determined 
and prepared the help that shall help us. This cannot fail. 
For he says, ‘Can a woman forget her sucking child, that 
she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? 
yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. See, I 
have graven thee on the palms of my hands.’ I have 
lately seen two miracles,” he continues; “the first, as I was 
looking out of my window and saw the stars in heaven, and 
all that beautiful vaulted roof of God, and yet saw no 
pillars on which the Master Builder had fixed this vault; 
yet the heaven fell not, but all that grand arch stood firm. 
Now there are some who search for such pillars, and want 
to touch and grasp them, and since they cannot, they won^ 
der and tremble as if the heaven must certainly fall, for no 
other reason but because they cannot touch and grasp its 
pillars. If they could lay hold on those, think they, then 
the heaven would stand firm! 

“ The second miracle was—I saw great clouds rolling 
over us, with such a ponderous weight that they might be 
compared to a great ocean, and yet I saw no foundation 
on which they rested or were based, nor any shore which 
kept them back; yet they fell not on us, but frowned on 
us with a stern countenance and fled. But when they had 
passed by, then shone forth both their foundation and our 
roof which had kept them back—the rainbow! Yet that 
was indeed a weak, thin, slight foundation and roof, which 
soon melted away into the clouds, and was more like a 
shadowy prism, such as we see through colored glass, than 
a strong and firm foundation; so that we might well distrust 
that feeble dike which kept back that terrible weight of 
waters. Yet we found, in fact, that this unsubstantial 
prism could bear up the weight of waters, and that it 
guards us safely. But there are some who look rather at 
the thickness and massy weight of the waters and clouds, 
than at this thin, slight, narrow bow of promise. They 
would like to feel the strength of that shadowy, evanescent 
arch, and because they cannot do this, they are ever fear¬ 
ing that the clouds will bring back the deluge.” 

Heavenly Father, since one man who trusts thy word 
can thus uphold a nation, what could not thy word do for 
each of us if we would each of us thus trust it, and thee 
who speakest it! 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


385 


thekla’s story. 

Wittenberg, 1540 . 

The time I used to dread most of all in my life, after 
that great bereavement which laid it waste, is come. I am 
in the monotonous level of solitary middle age. The 
sunny homes of childhood, and even the joyous breezy 
slopes of youth, are almost out of sight behind me; and the 
snowy heights of reverend age, from which we can look over 
into the promised land beyond, are almost as far before me. 
Other lives have grown from the bubbling spring into the 
broad and placid river, while mine is still the little narrow 
stream it was at first, only creeping slow and noiseless 
through the flats, instead of springing gladly from rock to 
rock, making music wherever it came. Yet lam content, 
absolutely, fully content. I am sure that my life has been 
ordered by the highest wisdom and love; and that (as far 
as my faithless heart does not hinder it) God is leading me 
also on to the very highest and best destiny for me. 

I did not always think so. I used to fear that not only 
would this bereavement throw a shadow on my earthly life, 
hut that it would stunt and enfeeble my nature forever; 
that missing all the sweet, ennobling relationships of mar¬ 
ried life, even through the ages I should be but an unde¬ 
veloped, one-sided creature. 

But one day I was reading in Dr. Luther’s German 
Bible the chapter about the body of Christ, the twelfth of 
First Corinthians, and great comfort came into my heart 
through it. I saw that we are not meant to be separate 
atoms, each complete in itself, but members of a body, 
each only complete through union with all the rest. And 
then I saw how entirely unimportant it is in what place 
Christ shall set me in his body; and how impossible it is 
for us to judge what he is training us for, until the body 
is perfected and we see what we are to be in it. 

On the Diiben Heath also, soon after, when I was walk¬ 
ing home with Else’s Gretchen, the same lesson came to 
me in a parable, through a clump of trees under the shade 
of which we were-resting. Often, from a distance, we had 
admired the beautiful symmetry of the group, and now 
looking up I saw how imperfect every separate tree was, all 
leaning in various directions, and all only developed on one 
side. If each tree had said, “I am a beech tree, and I 
ought to throw out branches on every side, like my brother 


386 


THE SCH0NBE11G-C0TTA FAMILY. 


standing alone on the heath,” what would have become of 
that beautiful clump? And looking up through the green 
interwoven leaves to the blue sky, I said: 

“Heavenly Father, thou art wise! I will doubt no 
more. Plant me where thou wilt in thy garden, and let 
me grow as thou wilt! Thou wilt not let me fail of my 
highest end.” 

Hr. Luther also said many things which helped me from 
time to time, in conversation or in his sermons. 

“The barley,” he said, “must suffer much from man. 
First, it is cast into the earth that it may decay. Then, 
when it is grown up and ripe, it is cut and mown down. 
Then it is crushed and pressed, fermented and brewed into 
beer. 

“Just such a martyr also is the linen or flax. When it 
is ripe it is plucked, steeped in water, beaten, dried, hacked, 
spun, and woven into linen, which again is torn and cut. 
Afterward it is made into plaster for sores, and used for 
binding up wounds. Then it becomes lint, is laid under 
the stamping machines in the paper mill, and torn into 
small bits. From this they make paper for writing and 
printing. 

“These creatures, and many others like them, which are 
of great use to us, must thus suffer. Thus also must good, 
godly Christians suffer much from the ungodly and wicked. 
Thus, however, the barley, wine and corn are ennobled, in 
man becoming flesh, and in the Christian man’s flesh 
entering into the heavenly kingdom.” 

Often he speaks of the “dear, holy cross, a portion of 
which is given to all Christians.” 

“All the saints,” he said once, when a little child of one 
of his friends lay ill, “must drink of the bitter cup. Could 
Mary even, the dear mother of our Lord, escape? All 
who are dear to him must suffer. Christians conquer 
when they suffer; only when they rebel and resist are they 
defeated and lose the day.” 

He indeed knows what trial and temptation mean. 
Many a bitter cup has he had to drink, he to whom the 
sins, and selfishness, and divisions of Christians are per¬ 
sonal sorrow and shame. It is therefore, no doubt, that he 
knows so well how to sustain and comfort. Those, he 
says, who are to be the bones and sinews of the church 
must expect the hardest blows. 


THE SCHONBE11G-C0TTA FAMILY. 


387 


Well I remember his saying, when, on the 8th of August, 
1529, before his going to Coburg, he and his wife lay sick 
of a fever, while he suffered also from sciatica, and many 
other ailments: 

“ God has touched me sorely. I have been impatient; but 
God knows better than I whereto it serves. Our Lord 
God is like a printer 'who sets the letters backward, so that 
here we cannot read them . When ice are printed off yon¬ 
der , in the life to come , we shall read all clear and straight¬ 
forward. Meantime we must have patience.” 

In other ways more than I can number he and his words 
have helped me. No one seems to understand as he does 
what the devil is and does. It is the temptation in the 
sorrow which is the thing to be dreaded and guarded 
against. This was what I did not understand at first when 
Bertrand died. I thought I was rebellious, and dated not 
approach God till I ceased to feel rebellious. I did not 
understand that the malignant one who tempted me to 
rebel also tempted me to think God would not forgive. 
I had thought before of affliction as a kind of sanctuary 
where naturally I should feel God near. I had to learn 
that it is also night-time, even “the hour of darkness,” in 
which the prince of darkness draws near unseen. As 
Luther says, “The devil torments us in the place where 
we are most tender and weak, as in paradise he fell not on 
Adam, but on Eve.” 

Inexpressible was the relief to me when I learned who 
had been tormenting me, and turned to Him who van¬ 
quished the tempter of old to banish him now from me. 
For terrible as Dr. Luther knows that fallen angel to be, 
“the antithesis,” as he said, “of the Ten Commandments,” 
who for thousands of years has been studying with an 
angel’s intellectual power, “how most effectually to distress 
and ruin man,” he always reminds us that, nevertheless, 
the devil is a vanquished foe, that the victory has not now 
to be won; that, bold as the evil one is to assail and tempt 
the unguarded, a word or look of faith will compel him to 
flee “like a beaten hound.” It is this blending of the sense 
of Satan’s power to tempt, with the conviction of his pow¬ 
erlessness to injure the believing heart, which has so often 
sustained me in Dr. Luther’s words. 

But it is not only thus that he has helped me. He 
presses on us often the necessity of occupation. It is 


388 


THE SCHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


better, he says, to engage in the hnmblest work, than to 
sit still alone and encounter the temptations of Satan. 
“ Oft in my temptations I have need to talk even with a 
child, in order to expel such thought as the devil possesses 
me with; and this teaches me not to boast as if of myself 
I were able to help myself, and to subsist without the 
strength of Christ. I need one at times to help me who 
in his whole body has not as much theology as I have in 
one finger.” “The human heart,” he says, “is like a mill¬ 
stone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns, and 
grinds, and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat 
it still grinds on, but then it is itself it grinds and wears 
away. So the human heart, unless it be occupied with 
some employment, leaves space for the devil, who wriggles 
himself in, and brings with him a whole host of evil 
thoughts, temptations, tribulations, which grind away the 
heart.” 

After hearing him say this, I tried hard to find myself 
some occupation. At first it seemed difficult. Else 
wanted little help with her children, or only occasionally. 
At home the cares of poverty were over, and my dear 
father and mother lived in comfort, without my aid. I 
used discontentedly to wish sometimes that we were poor 
again, as in Else’s girlish days, that I might be needed, and 
really feel it of some use to spin and embroider, instead of 
feeling that I only worked for the sake of not being ilde, 
and that no one would be the better for what I did. 

At other times I used to long to seclude myself from all 
the happy life around, and half to reproach Dr. Luther in 
my heart for causing the suppression of the convents. In 
a nunnery, at least, I thought I should have been some¬ 
thing definite and recognized, instead of the negative, 
undeveloped creature I felt myself to be, only distinguished 
from those around by the absence of what made their lives 
real and happy. 

My mother’s recovery from the plague helped to cure me 
of that, by reminding me of the home blessings still left. 
I began, too, to confide once more in God, and I was com¬ 
forted by thinking of what my grandmother said to me one 
day when I was a little girl, crying hopelessly over a tan¬ 
gled skein and sobbing, “I shall never untangle it;” 
“Wind, dear child, wind on, inch by inch, undo each knot 
one by one, and the skein will soon disentangle itself.” 


THE SCRONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


389 


So I resolved to wind on my little thread of life day by 
day, and undo one little knot after another, until now, 
indeed, the skein has untangled itself. 

Few women, I think, have a life more full of love and 
interest than mine. I have undertaken the care of a school 
for little girls, among whom are two orphans, made father¬ 
less by the peasauts’ war, who were sent to us; and this * 
also I owe to Dr. Luther. He has nothing more at heart 
than the education of the young; and nothing gives him 
more pain than to see the covetousness which grudges funds 
for schools; and nothing more joy than to see the little 
ones grow up in all good knowledge. As he wrote to the 
Elector John from Coburg twelve years ago: 

“The merciful God shows himself indeed gracious in 
making his Word so fruitful in your land. The tender 
little boys and maidens are so well instructed in the Cate¬ 
chism and Scriptures, that my heart melts when I see that 
young boys and girls can pray, believe, and speak better of 
God and Christ than all the convents and schools could in 
the olden time. 

“Such youth in your grace’s land are a fair paradise, of 
which the like is not in the world. It is as if God said, 
‘Courage, dear Duke John, I commit to thee my noblest 
treasure, my pleasant paradise; thou shalt be father over 
it. For under thy guard and rule I place it, and give thee 
the honor that thou shalt be my gardener and steward.’ 
This is assuredly true. It is even as if our Lord himself 
were your grace’s guest and ward, since his Word and his 
little ones are your perpetual guests and wards.” 

For a little while a lady, a friend of his wife, resided in 
his house in order to commence such a school at Witten¬ 
berg for young girls; and now it has become my charge. 
And often Dr. Luther comes in and lays his hands on the 
heads of the little ones, and asks God to bless them, 
or listens while they repeat the Catechism or the holy 
Scriptures. 

December 25, 1542. 

Once more the Christmas tree has been planted in our 
homes at Wittenberg. How many such happy Christian 
homes there are among us! Our Else’s, Justus Jonas, and 
his gentle, sympathizing wife, who, Dr. Luther says, 

“ always brings comfort in her kind, pleasant countenance.” 


390 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


We all meet at Else’s home on such occasions now. The 
voices of the children are better than light to the blind 
eyes of my father, and my mother renews her own maternal 
joys again in her grandchildren, without the cares. 

But of all these homes none is happier or more united 
than Dr. Luther’s. His childlike pleasure in little things 
makes every family festival in his house so joyous; and the 
children’s plays and pleasures, as well as their little trou¬ 
bles, are to him a perpetual parable of the heavenly family, 
and of our relationship to God. There are five children in 
his family now; Hans, the first-born; Magdalen, a lovely, 
loving girl of thirteen; Paul, Martin, and Margaretha. 

How happy it is for those who are bereaved and sorrow¬ 
ful that our Christian festivals point forward and upward 
as well as backward; that the eternal joy to which we are 
drawing ever nearer is linked to the earthly joy which has 
passed away. Yes, the old heathen tree of life, which that 
young green fir from the primeval forests of our land is 
said to typify, has been christened into the Christmas tree. 
The old tree of life was a tree of sorrow, and had its roots in 
the evanescent earth, and at its base sat the mournful Des¬ 
tinies, ready to cut the thread of human life. Nature ever re¬ 
newing herself contrasts with the human life that blooms but 
once. But our tree of life is a tree of joy, and is rooted 
in the eternal paradise of joy. The angels watch over it, 
and it recalls the birth of the second man—the Lord from 
heaven—who is the life-giving spirit. In it the evanescence 
of Nature, immortal as she seems, is contrasted with the 
true eternal life of mortal man. In the joy of the little 
ones, once more, thank God, my whole heart seems to 
rejoice; for I also have my face toward the dawn, and I can 
hear the fountain of life bubbling up whichever way I 
turn. Only, before me it is best and freshest,’for it is 
springing up to life everlasting. 


December, 1542. 

A shadow has fallen on the peaceful home of Dr. 
Luther: Magdalen, the unselfish, obedient, pious, loving 
child—the darling of her father’s heart—is dead; the first¬ 
born daughter, whose likeness, when she was a year old, 
used to cheer and delight him at Coburg. 

On the 5th of this last September she was taken ill, and 
then Luther wrote at once to his friend Marcus Crodel to 


THE SGHONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 3yl 

send his son John from Torgan, where he was studying, 
to see his sister. He wrote: 

“ Grace and peace, my Marcus Crodel. I request that 
you will conceal from my John what I am writing to you. 
My daughter Magdalen is literally almost at the point of 
death—soon about to depart to her Father in heaven, 
unless it should yet seem flt to God to spare her. But she 
herself so sighs to see her brother, that I am constrained to 
send a carriage to fetch him. They indeed loved one an¬ 
other greatly. May she survive to his coming! I do what 
I can, lest afterward, the sense of having neglected any¬ 
thing should torment me. Desire him, therefore, without 
mentioning the cause, to return hither at once with all 
speed in this carriage; hither, where she will either sleep 
in the Lord or be restored. Farewell in the Lord.” 

Her brother came, but she was not restored. 

As she lay very ill, Doctor Martin said: 

“She is very dear to me; but, gracious God, if it is thy 
will to take her hence, I am content to know that she will 
be with thee.” 

And as she lay in the bed, he said to her: 

“Magdalenchen, my little daughter, thou wouldst like 
to stay with thy father; and thou art content also to go to 
thy Father yonder.” 

Said she, “Yes, dearest father; as God wills.” 

Then said the father: 

“ Thou darling child, the spirit is willing, but the flesh 
is weak.” 

Then he turned away and said: 

“ She is very dear to me. If the flesh is so strong, what 
will the spirit be?” 

And among other things he said: 

“For a thousand years God has given no bishop such 
great gifts as he has given me; and we should rejoice in 
his gifts. I am angry with myself that I cannot rejoice in 
my heart over her, nor give thanks; although now and 
then I can sing a little song to our God, and thank him a 
little for all this. But let us take courage; living or 
dying, we are the Lord’s. ‘ Sive vivimus , sive moremur , 
Domini sumusG This is true, whether we take ‘Domini’ 
in the nominative or the geuitive; we are the Lord’s, and 
in him we are lords over death and life.” 


392 


THE MHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


Then said Master George Rorer: 

“I once heard your reverence say a thing which often 
comforts me, namely, ‘I have prayed our Lord God that he 
will give me a happy departure when I journey hence. 
And he will do it; of that I feel sure. At my latter end I 
shall yet speak with Christ my Lord, were it for ever so 
brief a space.’ I fear sometimes,” continued Master Rorer, 
“that I shall depart hence suddenly, in silence, without 
being able to speak a word.” 

Then said Dr. Martin Luther: 

“Living or dying, we are the Lord’s. It is equally so 
whether you were killed by falling downstairs, or were 
sitting and writing, aud suddenly should die. It would 
not injure me if 1 fell from a ladder and lay dead at its 
foot; for the devil hates us grievously, and might even 
bring about such a thing as that.” 

When, at last, the little Magdalen lay at the point of 
death, her father fell on his knees by her bedside, wept 
bitterly, and prayed that God would receive her. Then 
she departed, and fell asleep in her father’s arms. Her 
mother was also in the room, but further off, on account 
of her grief. This happened a little after nine o’clock, on 
the Wednesday after the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, 
1542. 

The doctor repeated often, as before said: 

“I would desire indeed to keep my daughter, if our 
Lord God would leave her with me; for I love her very 
dearly. But his will be done; for nothing can be better 
than that for her.” 

While she still lived, he said to her: 

“Dear daughter, thou hast also a Father in heaven; 
thou art going to him.” 

Then said Master Philip: 

“ The love of parents is an image and illustration of the 
love of God, engraven on the human heart. If, then, the 
love of God to the human race is as great as that of parents 
to their children, it is indeed great and fervent.” 

When she was laid in the coffin, Dr. Martin said: 

“Thou darling Lenichen, how well it is with thee!” 

And as he gazed on her lying there, he said: 

“Ah, thou sweet Lenichen, thou shalt rise again, and 
shine like a star; yes, like the sun!” 

They had made the coffin too narrow and too short, and 
he said: 


393 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

“The bed is too small for thee! I am indeed joyful in 
spirit, but after the flesh I am very sad; this parting is so 
beyond measure trying. Wonderful it is that I should 
know she is certainly at peace, and that all is well with 
her, and yet should be so sad.” 

And when the people who came to lay out the corpse, 
according to custom, spoke to the doctor, and said they 
were sorry for his affliction, he said: 

“You should rejoice. I have sent a saint to heaven; 
yes, a living saint! May we have such a death! Such a 
death 1 would gladly die this very hour.” 

Then said one, “That is true indeed; yet every one 
would wish to keep his own.” 

Dr. Martin answered: 

“Flesh is flesh, and blood is blood. I am glad that she 
is yonder. There is no sorrow but that of the flesh.” 

To others who came he said: 

“ Grieve not. I have sent a saint to heaven; yes, I have 
sent two such thither!” alluding to his infant Elizabeth. 

As they were chanting by the corpse, “ Lord, remember 
not our former sins, which are of old,” he said: 

“I say, oh Lord, not our former sins only, nor only 
those of old, but our present sins; for we are usurers, 
exactors, misers. Yea, the abomination of the mass is 
still in the world!” 

When the coffin was closed, and she was buried, he said, 
“There is indeed a resurrection of the body.” 

And as they returned from the funeral, he said: 

“My daughter is now provided for in body and soul. 
We Christians have nothing to complain of; we know it 
must be so. We are more certain of eternal life than of 
anything else; for God who has promised it to us for his 
dear Son’s sake, can never lie. Two saints of my flesh 
our Lord God has taken, but not of my blood. Flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the kingdom.” 

Among other things, he said: 

“We must take great care for our children, and especi¬ 
ally for the poor little maidens; we must not leave it to 
others to care for them. I have no compassion on the 
boys. A lad can maintain himself wherever he is, if he 
will only work; and if he will not work, he is a scoundrel. 
But the poor maiden-kind must have a staff to lean on.” 

And again: 


394 


THE SCHONBEUG-COTTA FAMIL Y. 


“I gave this daughter very willingly to our God. After 
the flesh, I would indeed have wished to keep her longer 
with me; but since he has taken her hence, I thank him.” 

The night before Magdalen Luther died, her mother 
had a dream, in which she saw two men clothed in fair 
raiment, beautiful and young, come and lead her daughter 
away to her bridal. When, on the next morning, Philip 
Melancthon came into the cloister, and asked her how her 
daughter was, she told him her dream. 

But he was alarmed at it, and said to others: 

“ Those young men are the dear angels who will come 
and lead this maiden into the kingdom of heaven, to the 
true Bridal.” 

And the same day she died. 

Some little time after her death, Dr. Martin Luther 
said: 

“If my daughter Magdalen could come to life again, 
and bring with her to me the Turkish kingdom, I would 
not have it. Oh, she is well cared for: ‘Beati mortui qui 
in Domino moriuntur .’ Who dies thus, certainly has 
eternal life. I would that I, and my children, and ye all 
could thus depart; for evil days are coming. There is 
neither help nor counsel more on earth, I see, until the 
judgment day. 1 hope, if God will, it will not be long 
delayed; for covetousness and usury increase.” 

And often at supper he repeated, “ Et multipicata sunt 
mala in terris.” 

He himself made this epitaph, and had it placed on his 
Magdalen’s tomb: 

. “ Dormio cum sanctis liic Magdalena Lutheri . 

. Filia, et lioc strato tecta quiesco meo, 

. Filia mortis eram, peccati semine nata, . . 

. Sanguine sed vivo, Christe, redempta tuo.”*. 


*A friend has translated it thus:—- 

.. “I, Luther’s daughter, Magdalen, 

. Here slumber with the blest; 

. Upon this bed I lay my head, 

. And take my quiet rest. 

. I was a child of death on earth, 

. In sin my life was given; 

. But on the tree Christ died for me, 

.. And now I live in heaven.” 



























TEE SCEONBEUO-COTTA FAMILY. 395 

In German: 

.... “ Here sleep I, Lenichen, Dr. Luther’s little daughter,. 

.... Rest with all the saints in my little bed; . 

.... I who was born in sins, . 

.... And must forever have been lost, . 

.... But now 1 live, and all is well with me, . 

Lord Christ, redeemed with thy blood.” . 

Yet, indeed, although he tries to cheer others, he 
laments long and deeply himself, as many of his letters 
show. 

To Jonas he wrote: 

“ I think you will have heard that my dearest daughter 
Magdalen is born again to the eternal kingdom of Christ. 
But although I and my wife ought to do nothing hut give 
thanks, rejoicing in so happy and blessed a departure, by 
which she has escaped the power of the flesh, the world, 
the Turk, and the devil; yet such is the strength of 
natural affection, that we cannot part with her without 
sobs and groans of heart. They cleave to our heart, they 
remain fixed in its depths—her face, her words—the looks, 
living and dying, of that most dutiful and obedient child; 
so that even the death of Christ (and what are all deaths 
in comparison with that?) scarcely can efface her death 
from our minds. Do thou, therefore, give thanks to God 
in our stead. Wonder at the great work of God who thus 
glorifies flesh! She was, as thou knowest, gentle and 
sweet in disposition, and was altogether lovely. Blessed 
be the Lord Jesus Christ, who called and chose, and has 
thus magnified her! I wish for myself and all mine, that 
we may attain to such a death; yea, rather, to such a life, 
which only I ask from God, the Father of all consolation 
and mercy.” 

And again, to Jacob Probst, pastor at Bremen: 

“My most dear child, Madgalen, has departed to her 
heavenly Father, falling asleep full of faith in Christ. An 
indignant horror against death softens my tears. I loved 
her vehemently. But in that day we shall be avenged on 
death, and on him who is the author of death.” 

And to Amsdorf: 

“ Thanks to thee for endeavoring to console me on the 
death of my dearest daughter. I loved her not only for 
that she was my flesh, but for her most placid and gentle 
spirit, ever so dutiful to me. But now I rejoice that she is 












396 


TEE SGEONBERG-GOTTA FAMILY. 


gone to live with her heavenly Father, and is fallen into 
sweetest sleep until that day. For the times are and will 
be worse and worse; and in my heart I pray that to thee, 
and to all dear to me, may be given such an hour of depar¬ 
ture, and with such placid quiet, truly to fall asleep in 
the Lord. 1 The just are gathered, and rest in their beds.'* 
‘For verily the world is as a horrible Sodom.’ ” 

And to Lauterbach: 

“Thou writest well, that in this most evil age death (or 
more truly, sleep) is to be desired by all. And although 
the departure of that most dear child has, indeed, no little 
moved me, yet I rejoice more that she, a daughter of the 
kingdom, is snatched from the jaws of the devil and the 
world; so sweetly did she fall asleep in Christ.” 

So mournfully and tenderly he writes and speaks, the 
shadow of that sorrow at the center of his life overspread¬ 
ing the whole world with darkness to him. Or rather, as 
he would say, the joy of that loving, dutiful child’s pres¬ 
ence being withdrawn, he looks out from his cold and 
darkened hearth, and sees the world as it is; the covetous¬ 
ness of the rich; the just demands, yet insurrectionary 
attempts of the poor; the war with the Turks without, the 
strife in the empire within; the fierce animosities of im¬ 
pending religous war; the lukewarmness and divisions 
among his friends. For many years God gave that feeling 
heart a refuge from all these in the bright, unbroken circle 
of his home. But now the next look to him seems beyond 
this life; to death which unveils, or to the kingdom of 
truth and righteousness, and love, to each, one by one; or 
still more, to the glorious Advent which will manifest it to 
all. Of this he delights to speak. The end of the world* 
he feels sure, is near; and he says all preachers should tell 
their people to pray for its coming, as the beginning of the 
golden age. He said once: “Oh gracious God, come soon 
again! I am waiting ever for the day—the spring morn¬ 
ing, when day and night are equal, and the clear, brighi 
rose of that dawn shall appear. From that glow of morn¬ 
ing I imagine a thick, black cloud will issue, forked with 
lightning, and then a crash, and heaven and earth will 
fall. Praise be to God, who has taught us to long and 
look for that day. In the papacy, they sing, 

“ ‘ Pies irae, dies ilia; * 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


397 


but we look forward to it with hope; and I trust it is not 
far distant.” 

Yet he is no dreamer, listlessly clasping his hands in the 
night, and watching for the dawn. He is of the day, a 
child of the light; and calmly, and often cheerfully, he 
pursues his life of ceaseless toil for others, considerately 
attending to the wants and pleasures of all, from the least 
to the greatest; affectionately desirous to part with his 
plate, rather than not give a generous reward to a faith¬ 
ful old servant, who was retiring from his service; plead¬ 
ing the cause of the helpless; writing letters of consolation 
to the humblest who need his aid; caring for all the 
churches, yet steadily disciplining his children when they 
need it, or ready to enter into any scheme for their pleasure. 

Wittenberg, 1545. 

It seems as if Dr. Luther were as necessary to us now as 
when he gave the first impulse to better things, by affixing 
his thesis to the doors of Wittenberg, or when the eyes of 
the nation centered on him at Worms. In his quiet home 
he sits and holds the threads which guide so many lives, 
and the destinies of so many lands. He has been often 
ailing lately, and sometimes very seriously. The selfish 
luxury of the rich burghers and nobles troubles him much. 
He almost forced his way one day into the elector’s cabinet, 
to press on him the appropriation of some of the confiscated 
church revenues to the payment of pastors and school¬ 
masters; and earnestly, again and again, from the pulpit, 
does he denounce covetousness. 

“All other vices,” he says, “bring their pleasures; but 
the wretched avaricious man is the slave of his goods, not 
their master; he enjoys neither this world nor the next. 
Here he has purgatory, and there hell; while faith and 
content bring rest to the soul here, and afterward bring 
the soul to heaven. For the avaricious lack what they 
have, as well as what they have not. ” 

Never was a heart more free from selfish interests and 
aims than his. His faith is always seeing the invisible 
God; and to him it seems the most melancholy folly, as 
well as sin, that people should build their nests in this 
forest, on all whose trees he sees the forester’s mark of 
destruction. 

The tone of his preaching has often lately been reproach¬ 
ful and sad. 


398 


THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


Else’s Gretchen, now a thoughtful maiden of three-and- 
twenty, said to me the othbr day: 

“Aunt Thekla, why does Dr. Luther preach sometimes 
as if his preaching had done no good? Have not many of 
the evil things he attacked been removed? Is not the 
Bible in every home? Our mother says we cannot be too 
thankful for living in these times, when we are taught the 
truth about God, and are given a religion of trust and love, 
instead of one of distrust and dread. Why does Dr. Luther 
often speak as if nothing had been done ?” 

And I could only say: 

“We see what has been done; but Dr. Luther only 
knows what he hoped to do. He said one day—‘If I had 
known at first that men were so hostile to the word of God, 
I should have held my peace. I imagined that they 
sinned merely through ignorance.’ 

“I suppose, Gretchen,” I said, “that he had before him 
the vision of the whole of Christendom flocking to adore 
and serve his Lord, when once he had shown them how 
good he is. We see what Dr. Luther has done. He sees 
what he hoped, and contrasts it with what is left undone.” 

THE MOTHER’S STORY. 

I do not think there is anpther old man and woman in 
Christendom who ought to be so thankful as my husband 
and I. 

No doubt all parents are inclined to look at the best 
side of their own children; but with ours there is really no 
other side to look at, it seems to me. Perhaps Else has 
sometimes a little too much of my anxious mind; but even 
in her tender heart, as in all the others, there is a large 
measure of her father’s hopefulness. And then, although 
they have, perhaps, none of them quite his inventive 
genius, yet that seems hardly a matter of regret; because, 
as things go in the world, other people seem so often, at 
the very goal, to step in and reap the fruit of these inven¬ 
tions, just by adding some insignificant detail which makes 
the invention work, and gives them the appearance of 
having been the real discoverers. 

Not that I mean to murmur for one instant against the 
people who have this little knack of just putting the fin¬ 
ishing touch and making things succeed; that also, as the 
house-father says, is God’s gift, and although.it cannot 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


399 


certainly be compared to those great, lofty thoughts and 
plans of my husband’s, it has more current value in the 
world. Not, again, that I would for an instant murmur 
at the world. We have all so much more in it than we 
deserve (except, perhaps, my dearest husband, who cares so 
little for its rewards!) It has been quite wonderful how 
good every one has been to us. Gottfried Reichenbach, 
and all our sons-in-law, are like sons to us; and certainly 
could not have prized our daughters more if they had had 
the dowry of princesses; although I must candidly say I 
think our dear daughters without a kreuzer of dowry are 
worth a fortune to any man. I often wonder how it is 
they are such housewives, and so sensible and wise in every 
way, when I never considered myself at all a first-rate man¬ 
ager. To be sure rheir father’s conversation was always 
very improving; and my dear blessed mother was a store¬ 
house of wisdom and experience. However, there is no 
accounting for these things. God is wonderfully good in 
blessing the humblest efforts to train up the little ones for 
him. We often think the poverty of their early years was 
quite a school of patience and household virtues* for them 
all. Even Christopher and Thekla, who caused us more 
anxiety at first than the others, are the very stay and joy 
of our old age; which shows how little we can foresee what 
good things God is preparing for us. 

How I used at one time to tremble for them both! It 
shocked Else and me so grievously to see Christopher, as 
we thought, quite turning his back on religion, after Fritz 
became a monk; and what a relief it was to see him find in 
Dr. Luther’s sermons and in the Bible the truth which 
bowed his heart in reverence, yet left his character free to 
develop itself without being compressed into a mold made 
for other characters. What a relief it was to hear that he 
turned, not from religion, but from what was false in the 
religion then taught, and to see him devoting himself to 
his calling as a printer with a feeling as sacred as Fritz to 
his work as a pastor! 

Then our Thekla, how anxious I was about her at one 
time! how eager to take her training out of God’s hands 
into my own, which I thought, in my ignorance, might 
spare her fervent, enthusiastic, loving heart some pain. 

I wanted to tame down and moderate everything in her 
by tender warnings and wise precepts. I wanted her to 


400 


THE SCHONBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


love less vehemently, to rejoice with more limitation, to 
grieve more moderately. I tried hard to compress her 
character into a narrower mold. But God would not 
have it so. I can see it all now. She was to love and 
rejoice, and then to weep and lament, according to the full 
measure of her heart, that in the heights and depths to 
which God led her, she might learn what she was to learn 
of the heights and depths of the love which extends beyond 
all joy and below all sorrow. Her character, instead of 
becoming dwarfed and stunted, as my ignorant hand might 
have made it, was to be thus braced, and strengthened, 
and rooted, that others might find shelter beneath her 
sympathy and love, as so many do now. I would have 
weakened in order to soften; God’s providence has strength¬ 
ened and expanded while softening, and made her strong 
to endure and pity as well as strong to feel. 

No one can say what she is to us, the one left entirely 
to us, to whom we are still the nearest and the dearest, 
who binds our years together by the unbroken memory of 
her tender care, and makes us young in her childlike love, 
and brings into our failing life the activity and interest of 
mature age by her own life of active benevolence. 

Else and her household are the delight of our daily life; 
Eva and Fritz are our most precious and consecrated treas¬ 
ures, and all the rest are good and dear as children can be; 
but to all the rest we are the grandmother and the grand¬ 
father. To Thekla we are “father” and “mother” still, 
the shelter of her life and the home of her affections. 
Only, sometimes my old anxious fears creep over me when 
I think what she will do when we are gone. But I have 
no excuse for these now, with all those promises of our 
Lord, and his words about the lilies and the birds, in plain 
German in my Bible, and the very same lilies and birds 
preaching to me in song as plain from the eaves and the 
garden outside my window. 

Never did any woman owe so much to Dr. Luther and 
the Reformation as I. Christopher’s religion; Fritz and 
Eva’s marriage; Thekla’s presence in our home, instead of 
her being a nun in some convent-prison; all the love of the 
last months my dear sister Agnes and I spent together 
before her peaceful death; and the great weight of fear 
removed from my own heart! 

And yet my timid, ease-loving nature will sometimes 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


401 


shrink, not so much from what has been done, as from the 
way in which it has been done. I fancy a little more gen¬ 
tleness might have prevented so terrible a breach between 
the new and the old religions; that the peasant war might 
have been saved; and somehow or other (how, I cannot at 
all tell) the good people on both sides might have been kept at 
one. For that there are good people on both sides, nothing 
will ever make me doubt. Indeed, is not one of our own 
sons—our good and sober-minded Pollux—still in the old 
church? And can I doubt that he and his devout, affec¬ 
tionate little wife, who visits the poor and nurses the sick, 
love God and try to serve him? 

In truth, I cannot help half counting it among our 
mercies that we have one son still adhering to the old reli¬ 
gion; although my children, who are wiser than I, do not 
think so; nor my husband, who is wiser than they; nor 
Dr. Luther, who is, on the whole, I believe, wiser than any 
one. Perhaps I should rather say, that great as the grief 
is to us and the loss to him, I cannot help seeing some 
good in our Pollux, remaining as a link between us and the 
religion of our fathers. It seems to remind us of the 
tie of our common creation and redemption, and our 
common faith, however dim, in our Creator and Redeemer. 
It prevents our thinking all Christendom which belongs to 
the old religion quite the same as the pagans or the Turks; 
and it also helps a little to prevent their thinking us such 
hopeless infidels. 

Besides, although they would not admit it, I feel sure 
that Dr. Luther and the Reformation have taught Pollux 
and his wife many things. They also have a German 
Bible; and although it is much more cumbrous than Dr. 
Luther’s, and, it seems to me, not half such genuine, 
hearty German, still he and his wife can read it; and I 
sometimes trust we shall find by and by we did not really 
differ so very much about our Saviour, although we may 
have differed about Dr. Luther. 

Perhaps I am wrong, however, in thinking that great 
changes might have been more quietly accomplished. 
Thekla says the spring must have its thunder-storms as 
well as its sunshine and gentle showers, and that the stone 
could not be rolled away from the sepulcher, nor the veil 
.ent in the holy place, without an earthquake. 

Jllse’s Gottfried says the devil would never suffer his lies 


402 THE SCHONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 

about the good and gracious God to be set aside without a 
battle; and that the dear holy angels have mighty wars to 
wage, as well as silent watch to keep by the cradles of the 
little ones. Only I cannot help wishing that the reformers, 
and even Dr. Luther himself, would follow the example of 
the archangel Michael in not returning railing for railing. 

Of one thing, however, I am quite sure, whatever any 
one may say; and that is, that it is among our great 
mercies that our Atlantis married a Swiss, so that through 
her we have a link with our brethren, the evangelical Chris¬ 
tians who follow the Zwinglian Confession. I shall always 
be thankful for the months her father and I passed under 
their roof. If Dr. Luther could only know how they 
revere him for his noble work, and how one they are with 
us and him in faith in Christ and Christian love! 

I was a little perplexed at one time how it could be that 
such good men should separate, until Thekla reminded me 
of that evil one who goes about accusing God to us, and us 
to one another. 

On the other hand, some of the Zwinglians are severe on 
Dr. Luther for his “compromise with Rome,” and his 
“unscriptural doctrines,” as some of them call his teach¬ 
ings about the sacraments. 

These are things on which my head is not clear enough 
to reason. It is always so much more natural to me to 
look out for the points of agreement than of difference; 
and it does seem to me, that deep below all the differences 
good men often mean the same. Dr. Luther looks on holy 
baptism in contrast with the monastic vows, and asserts 
the common glory of the baptism and Christian profession 
which all Christians share, against the exclusive claims of 
any section of priests and monks. And in the Holy Sup¬ 
per, it seems to me simply the certainty of the blessing, 
and the reality of the presence of our Saviour in the sacra¬ 
ment, that he is really vindicating, in his stand on the 
words, “ This is my body.” Baptism represents to him the 
consecration and priesthood of all Christians, to be defended 
against all narrow privileges of particular orders; the Holy 
Supper, the assured presence of Christ, to be defended 
against all doubters. 

To the Swiss, on the other hand, the contrast is between 
faith and form, letter and spirit. This is, at all events, 
what my husband thinks. 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


403 


I wish Dr. Luther would spend a few months with our 
Atlantis and her Conrad. I shall always be thankful we 
did. Lately, the tone of Dr. Luther’s preaching has often 
been reproachful and full of warning. These divisions 
between the evangelical Christians distress him so much. 
Yet he himself, with that resolute will of his, keeps them 
apart, as he would keep his children from poison, saying 
severe and bitter things of the Zwinglians, which sometimes 
grieve me much, because I know Conrad Winkelried’s 
parish and Atlantis’ home. 

Well, one thing is certain; if Dr. Luther had been like 
me, we should have had no Reformation at all. And Dr. 
Luther and the Reformation have brought peace to my 
heart and joy to my life, for which I would go through 
any storms. Only, to leave our dear ones behind in the 
storms is another thing! 

But our dear heavenly father has not, indeed, called us 
to leave them yet. When he does calls us, he will give us 
the strength for that. And then we shall see everything 
quite clearly, because we shall see our Saviour quite clearly 
as he is, know his love, and love him quite perfectly. 
What that will be we know not yet! 

But I am quite persuaded that when we do really see our 
blessed Lord face to face, and see all things in his light, we 
shall all be very much surprised, and find we have some¬ 
thing to unlearn, as well as infinitely much to learn; not 
Pollux, and the Zwinglians, and I only, but Dr. Philip 
Melancthon, and Dr. Luther, and all! 

For the Reformation, and even Dr. Luther’s German 
Bible, have not taken all the clouds away. Still, we see 
through a glass darkly. 

But they have taught us that there is nothing evil and 
dark behind to be found out; only, much to be revealed 
which is too good for us yet to understand, and too bright 
for us yet to see. 


PART XXL 

EVA’S AND AGNES’ STORY. 

Eisleben, 1542. 

Aunt Else says no one in the world ought to present 
more thanksgivings to God than Heinz and I, and I am 
sure she is right. 



404 


TIIE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


In the first place, we have the best father and mother in 
the world, so that whenever from our earliest years they 
have spoken to us about our Father in heaven, we have 
had just to think of what they were on earth to us, and 
feel that all their love and goodness together are what God 
is; only (if we can conceive such a thing) much more. We 
have only had to add to what they are, to learn what God 
is, not to take anything away; to say to ourselves, as we 
think of our parents, so kind in judging others, so loving, 
so true, “God is like that—only the love is greater and 
wiser than our father’s, tenderer and more sympathizing 
than our mother’s” (difficult as it is to imagine). And then 
there is just one thing in which he is unlike. His power 
is unbounded. He can do for us and give to us every bless¬ 
ing he sees it good to give. 

With such a father and mother on earth, and such a 
Father in heaven, and with Heinz, how can I ever thank 
our God enough? 

And our mother is so young still! Our dear father said 
the other day, “her hair has not a tinge of gray in it, but 
is as golden as our Agnes’.” And her face is so fair and 
sweet, and her voice so clear and full in her own dear 
hymns, or in talking! Aunt Else says, it makes one feel 
at rest to look at her, and that her voiec always was the 
sweetest in the world, something between church music and 
the cooing of a dove. Aunt Else says also, that even as a 
child she had just the same way she has now of seeing 
what you are thinking about—of coming into your heart, 
and making everything that is good in it feel it is under¬ 
stood, and all that is bad in it feel detected and slink away. 

Our dear father does not, indeed, look so young; but I 
like men to look as if they had been in the wars—as if their 
hearts had been well plowed and sown. And the gray 
in his hair, and the furrows on his forehead—those two 
upright ones when he is thinking—and the firm compres¬ 
sion of his mouth, and the hollow on his cheek, seem to me 
quite as beautiful in their way as our mother’s placid brow, 
and the dear look on her lips, like the dawn of a smile, 
as if the law of kindness had molded every curve. 

Then, in the second place (perhaps I ought to have said 
in the first), we have “the Catechism.” And Aunt Else 
says we have no idea, Heinz and I, what a blessing that is 
to us. We certainly did not always think it a blessing 


THE SCRONBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


405 


when we were learning it. But I begin to understand it 
now, especially since I have been staying at Wittenberg 
with Aunt Else, and she has told me about the perplexities 
of her childhood and early youth. 

Always to have learned about God as the Father who 
“cares for us every day”—gives us richly all things to en¬ 
joy, and “that all out of pure, fatherly, divine love and 
goodness; and of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he has 
redeemed me from all sin, from death, and from the 
power of the devil, to be his own—redeemed me, not with 
gold and silver, but with his holy, precious blood;” and of 
the Holy Spirit that “he dwells with us daily, calls us by his 
Gospel, enlightens, and richly forgives;” all this, she says, 
is the greatest blessing any one can know. To have no 
dark, suspicious thoughts of the good God, unconsciously 
drunk in from infancy, to dash away from our hearts—Dr. 
Luther himself says we have little idea what a gift that is 
to us young people of this generation. 

It used to be like listening to histories of dark days cen¬ 
turies ago, to hear Aunt Else speak of her childhood at 
Eisenach, when Dr. Luther also was a boy, and used to 
sing for bread at our good kinswoman Ursula Cotta’s door 
—Avhen the monks and nuns from the many high-walled 
convents used to walk demurely in their dark robes about 
the streets; and Aunt Else used to tremble at the thought 
of heaven, because it might be like a convent garden, and 
all the heavenly saints like Aunt Agnes. 

Our dear Great-aunt Agnes, how impossible for us to 
understand her being thus dreaded! she who was the play¬ 
mate of our childhood, and used to spoil us, our mother 
said, by doing everything we asked, and making us think 
she enjoyed being pulled about, and made a lion or a Turk 
of, as much as we enjoyed it. How well I remember now 
the pang that came over Heinz and me when we were told 
to speak and step softly, because she was ill, and then, 
taken for a few minutes in the day to sit quite still by her 
bedside with picture-books, because she loved to look at 
us, but could not bear any noise. And at last the day 
when we were led in solemnly, and she could look at us no 
more, but lay quite still and white, while we placed our 
flowers on the bed, and we both felt it too sacred and too 
much like being at church to cry, until our evening prayer¬ 
time came, and our mother told us that Aunt Agnes did 


406 


THE SGHONBERO-GOTTA FAMILY . 


not need our prayers any longer, because God had made 
her quite good and happy in heaven. And Heinz said he 
wished God would take us all, and make us quite good and 
happy with her. But I, when we were left in our cribs 
alone, sobbed myself to sleep. It seemed so terrible to 
think Aunt Agnes did not want us any more, and that we 
could do nothing more for her—she who had been so tern 
derly good to us! I was so afraid, also, that we had not 
been kind enough to her, had teased her to play with us, 
and made more noise than we ought; and that that was the 
reason God had taken her away. Heinz could not under- 
stand that at all. He was quite sure God was too kind; 
and although he also cried, he soon fell asleep. It was a 
great relief to me when our mother came round, as she 
always did the last thing to see if we were asleep, and I 
could sob out my troubles on her heart, and say: 

“Will Aunt Agnes never want us any more?” 

“Yes, darling,” said our mother; “she wants us now. 
She is waiting for us all to come to her.” 

“ Then it was not because we teased her, and were noisy, 
she was taken away? We did love her so very dearly! 
And can we do nothing for her now?” 

Then she told me how Aunt Agnes had suffered much 
here, and that our heavenly Father had taken her home, 
and that although we could not do anything for her now, 
we need not leave her name out of our nightly prayers, 
because we could always say, “ Thank God for taking dear 
Aunt Agnes home!” 

And so two things were written on my heart that night, 
that there was a place like home beyond the sky, where 
Aunt Agnes was waiting for us, loving us quite as much 
as ever, with God who loved us more than any one; and 
that we must be as kind as possible to people, and not give 
any one a moment’s pain, because a time may come when 
they will not need our kindness any more. 

It is very difficult for me who always think of Aunt 
Agnes waiting for us in heaven, with the wistful loving 
look she used to have when she lay watching for Heinz and 
me to come and sit by her bedside, to imagine what differ¬ 
ent thoughts Aunt Else had about her when she was a nun. 

But Aunt Else says she has no doubt that Heinz and I, 
with our teasing, and our noise, and our love, were among 
the chief instruments of her sanctification. Yes, those 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 40? 

days of Aunt Else’s childhood appear as far away from us 
as the days of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who lived at the 
Wartburg, used to seem from Aunt Else. It is wonderful 
to think what that miner’s son, whom old John Reineck 
remembers carrying on his shoulders to the schoolhouse 
up the hill, here at Eisleben, has done for us all. So com¬ 
pletely that grim old time seems to have passed away. 
/There is not a monastery left in all Saxony, and the pastors 
are all married, and schools are established in every town, 
where Dr. Luther says the young lads and maidens hear 
more about God and Christianity than the nuns and 
monks in all the convents had learned thirty years ago. 

Not that all the boys and maidens are good as they 
ought to be. No; that is too plain from what Heinz and 
I feel and know, and also from what our dear father 
preaches in the pulpit on Sundays. Our mother says 
sometimes she is afraid we of this generation shall grow up 
weak, and self-indulgent, and ease-loving, unlike our 
fathers who had to fight for every inch of the truth they 
hold, with the world, the flesh, and the devil. 

But our dear father smiles gravely, and says, she need 
not fear. These three enemies are not slain yet, and will 
give the young generation enough to do. Besides, the pope 
is still reigning at Rome, and the emperor is even now 
threatening us with an army, to say nothing of the Turks, 
and the Anabaptists, of whom Dr. Luther says so much. 

I knew very little of the world until two years ago, and not 
much, I am afraid, of myself. But when I was about fifteen 
I went alone to stay with Aunt Chriemhild and Aunt Else, 
and then I learned many things which in learning troubled 
me not a little, but now that they are learned make me 
happier than before, which our mother says is the way 
with most of God’s lessons. Before these visits, I had 
never left home; and although Heinz, who had been away, 
and was also naturally more thrown with other people as a 
boy than I was, often told me I knew no more of actual 
life than a baby, I never understood what he meant. 

I suppose I had always unconsciously thought our father 
and mother were the center of the world to every one as 
well as to us; and had just been thankful for my lot in 
life, because I believed in all respects no one else had any¬ 
thing like it; and entertained a quiet conviction that in their 
hearts every one thought the same. And to find that to 


408 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


other people our lot in life seemed pitiable and poor was an 
immense surprise to me, and no little grief. 

We left our old home in the forest many years since, 
when Heinz and I were quite children; and it only lingered 
in our memories as a kind of Eden or fairyland, where 
among wild flowers, and green glades, and singing birds, 
and streams, we made a home for all our dreams, not ques¬ 
tioning, however, in our hearts, that our new home at Eis- 
leben was quite as excellent in its way. Have we not a 
garden behind the house with several apple trees, and a 
pond as large as any of our neighbors, and an empty loft for 
wet days—the perfection of a loft—for telling fairy tales 
in, or making experiments, or preparing surprises of won¬ 
derful cabinet work with Heinz’s tools? And has not our 
Eisleben valley also its green and wooded hills, and in the 
forests around are there not strange glows all night from 
the great miners’ furnaces to which those of the charcoal 
burners in the Thuringian forest are mere toys? And 
are there not, moreover, all kinds of wild caverns and 
pits from which at intervals the miners come forth, 
grimy and independent, and sing their wild songs in 
chorus as they come home from work? And is not Eis¬ 
leben Dr. Luther’s birthplace? And have we not a high 
grammar-school which Dr. Luther founded, and in which 
our dear father teaches Latin? And do we not hear him 
preach once every Sunday? 

To me it always seemed, and seems still, that nothing 
can be nobler than our dear father’s office of telling the 
people the way to heaven on Sundays, and teaching their 
children the way to be wise and good on earth in the week. 
It was a shock to me when I found every one did not think 
the same. 

Not that every one was not always most kind to me, but 
it happened in this way. 

One day some visitors had been at Uncle Ulrich’s castle. 
They had complimented me on my golden hair, which 
Heinz always says is the color of the princess’ in the fairy 
tale. I went out at Aunt Chriemhild’s desire, feeling half 
shy and half flattered, to play with my cousins in the forest. 
As I was sitting hidden among the trees, twining wreaths 
from the forget-me-nots my cousins were gathering by the 
stream below, these ladies passed again. I heard one of 
them say: 


THE SCHOHB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 409 

“Yes, she is a well-mannered little thing for a school¬ 
master’s daughter.” 

“ I cannot think where a burgher maid—the Cottas are 
all burghers, are they not? should inherit those little white 
hands and those delicate features,” said the other. 

“Poor, too, doubtless, as they must be,” was the reply, 
“one would think she had never had to work about the 
house, as no doubt she must.” 

“ Who was her grandfather? ” 

“Only a printer at Wittenberg!” 

“Only a schoolmaster!” and “only a printer!” 

My whole heart was against the scornful words. Was 
this what people meant by paying compliments? Was this 
the estimate my father was held in in the world—he, the 
noblest man in it, who was fit to be the elector or the 
emperor? A bitter feeling came over me, which I thought 
was affection and an aggrieved sense of justice. But love 
is scarcely so bitter, or justice so fiery. 

I did not tell any one, nor did I shed a tear, but went on 
weaving my forget-me-not wreaths, and forswore the wicked 
and hollow world. Had I not promised to do so long since, 
through my godmother, at my baptism? Now, I thought 
I was learning what all that meant. 

At Aunt Else’s, however, another experience awaited 
me. There was to be a fair, and we were all to go in our 
best holiday dresses. My cousins had rich oriental jewels 
on their bodices; and although, as burgher maidens, they 
might not, like my cousins at the castle, wear velvets, they 
had jackets and dresses of the stiffest, richest silks which 
Uncle Reichenbach had brought from Italy and the East. 

My stuff dress certainly looked plain beside them, but 
I did not care in the least for that; my own dear mother 
and I had made it together; and she had hunted up some 
old precious stores to make me a taffetas jacket, which, as 
it was the most magnificent apparel I had ever possessed, 
we both looked at with much complacency. Nor did it 
seem to me in the least less beautiful now. The touch of 
my mother’s fingers had been on it, as she smoothed it 
round me the evening before I came away. And Aunt 
Else had said it was exactly like my mother. But my 
cousins were not quite pleased, it was evident; especially 
Fritz and the elder boys. They said nothing; but on the 
morning of the fete , a beautiful new dress, the counterpart 
of my cousin’s, was laid at my bedside before I awoke. 


410 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


I put it on with some pleasure, but, when I looked at 
myself in the glass—it was very unreasonable—I could not 
bear it. It seemed a reproach on my mother, and on my 
humble life and my dear, poor home at Eisleben, and I sat 
down and cried bitterly, until a gentle knock at the door 
aroused me; and Aunt Else came in, and found me sitting 
with tears on my face and on the beautiful new dress, 
exceedingly ashamed of myself. 

“Don’t you like it, my child? It was Fritz’s thought. 
I was afraid you might not be pleased.” 

“My mother thought the old one good enough,” I said 
in a very faltering tone. “ It was good enough for my 
home. I had better go home again.” 

Aunt Else was carefully wiping away the tears from my 
dress, but at these words she began to cry herself, and 
drew me to her heart, and said it was exactly what she 
should have felt in her young days at Eisenach, but that I 
must just wear the new dress to the fete , and then I need 
never wear it again unless I liked; and that I was right in 
thinking nothing half so good as my mother, and all she did, 
because.nothing ever was, or would be, she was sure. 

So we cried together, and were comforted; and I wore 
the green taffetas to the fair. 

But when I came home again to Eisleben, I felt more 
ashamed of myself than of the taffetas dress or of the flat¬ 
tering ladies at the castle. The dear, precious old home, 
in spite of all I could persuade myself to the contrary, did 
look small and poor, and the furniture worn and old. And 
yet I could see there new traces of care and welcome every¬ 
where—fresh rushes on the floors; a plain new quilt on 
my little bed, made, I knew, by my mother’s hands. 

She knew very soon that I was feeling troubled about 
something, and soon she knew it all, as I told her my bitter 
experiences of life. 

“Your father ‘only a schoolmaster!’” she said, “and 
you yourself presented with a new taffetas dress! Are 
these all your grievances, little Agnes?” 

“ All , mother,” I exclaimed; “and only!” 

“Is your father anything else but a schoolmaster, 
Agnes?” she said. 

“ I am not ashamed of that for an instant, mother,” I said; 
“you could not think it. I think it is much nobler to 
teach children than to hunt foxes, and buy and sell balegj 


THE send NBEUG-COTTA FAMILY. 


411 


of silk and wool. But the world seems to me exceedingly 
hollow and crooked; and I never wish to see any more of 
it. Oh, mother do you think it was all nonsense in me?” 

“ I think, my child, you have had an encounter with the 
world, the flesh, and the devil; and I think they are no 
contemptible enemies. And I think you have not left them 
behind.” 

“But is not our father’s calling nobler than any one’s, 
and our home the nicest in the world?” I said; “and Eis- 
leben really as beautiful in its way as the Thuringian 
forest, and as wise as Wittenberg?” 

“All callings may be noble,” she said; “and the one God 
calls us to is the noblest for us. Eisleben is not, I think, 
as beautiful as the old forest-covered hills at Gersdorf; nor 
Luther’s birthplace as great as his dwelling place, where 
he preaches and teaches, and sheds around him the influ¬ 
ence of his holy daily life. Other homes may he as good as 
yours, dear child, though none can be so to you.” 

And so I learned that what makes any calling noble is 
its being commanded by God, and what makes anything 
good is its being given by God; and that honest content¬ 
ment consists not in persuading ourselves that our things 
are the very best in the world, but in believing they are 
the best for us, and giving God thanks for them. 

That was the way I began to learn to know the world. 
And also in that way I began better to understand the Cat¬ 
echism, especially the part about the Lord’s Prayer, and 
that on the second article of the Creed, where we learn 
of Him who suffered for our sins and redeemed us with 
his holy precious blood. 

I have just returned from my second visit to Wittenberg, 
which was much happier than my first—indeed, exceedingly 
happy. 

The great delight of my visit, however, has been seeing 
and hearing Dr. Luther. His little daughter, Magdalen, 
three years younger than I am, had died not long before, 
but that seemed only to make Dr. Luther kinder than ever 
to all young maidens—“the poor maidenkind” as he calls 
them. 

His sermons seemed to me like a father talking to his 
children; and Aunt Else says he repeats the Catechism 
often himself “to God” to cheer his heart and strengthen 
himself—the great Dr. Martin Luther 1 


412 


THE SCHOMB ERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


I had heard so much of him, and always thought of him 
as the man nearest God on earth, great with a majesty 
surpassing infinitely that of the elector or the emperor. 
And now it was a great delight to see him in his home, in 
the dark wainscoted room looking on his garden, and to 
see him raise his head from his writing and smile kindly 
at us as he sat at the great table in the broad window, with 
Mistress Luther sewing on a lower seat beside him, and 
little Margaretha Luther, the youngest child, quietly play¬ 
ing beside them, contented with a look now and then from 
her father. 

I should like to have seen Magdalen Luther. She must 
have been such a good and loving child. But that will be 
hereafter in heaven! 

I suppose my feeling for Dr. Luther is different from 
that of my mother and father. They knew him during 
the conflict. We only know him as the conqueror, with 
the palm, as it were, already in his hand. 

But my great friend at Wittenberg is Aunt Thekla. I 
think, on the whole, there is no one I should more wish to 
be like. She understands one in that strange way without 
telling, like my mother. I think it is because she has felt 
so much. Aunt Else told me of the terrible sorrow she 
had when she was young. 

Our dear mother and father also had their great sorrows, 
although they came to the end of their sorrow in this life, 
and Aunt Thekla will only come to the end of hers in the 
other world. But it seems to have consecrated them all, 
I think, in some peculiar way. They all, and Dr. Luther 
also, make me think of the people who, they say, have the 
gift, by striking on the ground, of discovering where the 
hidden springs lie that others may know where to dig for 
the wells. Can sorrow only confer this gift of knowing 
where to find the hidden springs in the heart? If so, it 
must be worth while to suffer. Only there are just one 
or two sorrows which it seems almost impossible to bear. 

But, as our mother says, our Saviour has all the gifts in 
his hands; and “the greatest gift” of all (in whose hands 
the roughest tools can do the finest work), “is love!” And 
that is just the gift any one of us may have without limit. 

thekla’s story. 

^ Wittenberg, 23d January, 1546. 

Dr. Luther has left Wittenberg to-day for Eisleben > 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


4.13 


his birthplace, to settle a dispute between the counts of 
Mansfeld concerning certain rights of church patronage. 

He left in good spirits, intending to return in a few days. 
His three sons, John, Martin, and Paul, wont with him. 
Mistress Luther is anxious and depressed about his depar¬ 
ture, but we trust without especial cause, although he has 
often of late been weak and suffering. 

The dullness and silence which to me always seem to 
settle down on Wittenberg in his absence are increased now 
doubtless by this wintry weather, and the rains and storms 
which have been swelling the rivers to floods. He is, 
indeed, the true father and king of our little world; and 
when he is with us all Germany and the world seem nearer 
us through his wide-seeing mind and his heart that thrills 
to every touch of want or sorrow throughout the world. 

February. 

Mistress Luther has told me to-day that Dr. Luther 
said before he left he could “ lie down on his deathbed with 
joy if he could first see his dear lords of Mansfeld recon¬ 
ciled.” She says also he had just concluded the Commen¬ 
tary on Genesis, on which he has been working these ten 
years, with these words: 

“ 1 am weak and can do no more. Pray God he may 
grant me a peaceful and happy death.” 

She thinks his mind has been dwelling of late more than 
usual, even with him, on death, and fears he feels some 
inward premonition or presentiment of a speedy departure. 

So long he has spoken of death as a thing to be desired! 
Yet it always makes our heart ache to hear him do so. Of 
the Advent as the end of all evil and the beginning of the 
Kingdom, we can well bear to hear him speak, but not of 
that which, if the end of all evil to him, would seem like 
the beginning of all sorrows to us. 

Now, however, Mistress Luther is somewhat comforted 
by his letters, which are more cheerful than those she 
received during his absence last year, when he counseled 
her to sell all their Wittenberg property, and take refuge 
in her estate at Zollsdorf, that he might know her safe out 
of Wittenberg—that “haunt of. selfishness and luxury”— 
before he died. 

His first letter since leaving Wittenberg this time is 
addressed; 


414 


THE SCHONBEllG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“To my kind and dear Kathe Lutherin, at Wittenberg, 
grace and peace in the Lord. 

“Dear Kathe: To-day, at half-past eight o’clock, we 
reached Halle but have not yet arrived at Eisleben; for a 
great Anabaptist encountered us with water-floods and 
great blocks of ice, which covered the land, and threatened 
to baptize us all again. Neither could we return, on 
account of the Mulda. Therefore we remain tranquilly 
here at Halle, between the two streams. Not that we 
thirst for water to drink, but console ourselves with good 
Torgau beer and Rhine wine, in case the Saala should break 
out into a rage again. For we and our servants, and the 
ferrymen, would not tempt God by venturing on the 
water; for the devil is furious against us, and dwells in the 
water-floods; and it is better to escape him than to com¬ 
plain of him, nor is it necessary that we should become the 
jest of the pope and his hosts. I could not have believed 
that the Saala could have made such a brewing, bursting 
over the causeway and all. Now no more; but pray for us 
and the pious. I hold, hadst thou been here, thou hadst 
counseled us to do precisely what we have done. So for 
once we should have taken thy advice. Herewith I com¬ 
mend you to God. Amen. At Halle, on the day of the 
conversion of St. Paul. 

“Martinus Luther.” 

Four other letters she has received, one dated on the 2d 
of February, addressed: 

“ To my heartily beloved consort Katherin Lutherin, the 
Zollsdorfin doctoress, proprietress of the Saumarkt, and 
whatever else she may be, grace and peace in Christ; and 
my old poor (and, as I know, powerless) love to thee! 

“Dear Kathe: I became very weak on the road close to 
Eisleben, for my sins; although, wert thou there, thou 
wouldst have said it was for the sins of the Jews. For near 
Eisleben we passed through a village where many Jews 
reside, and it is true, as I came through it, a cold wind 
came through my Baret (doctor’s hat), and my head, as if 
it would turn my brain to ice. 

“ Thy sons left Mansfeld yesterday, because Hans von 
Tene so humbly entreated them to accompany him. I 
know not what they do. If it were cold, they might help 
me freeze here. Since, however, it is warm again, they 


THE SCHd'NBERQ-COTTA FAMILY. 


415 


may do or suffer anything else they like. Herewith I com¬ 
mend you and all the house to God, and greet all our 
friends. Vigilia purificationis .” 

And again: 

Eisleben. 

. “ To the deeply learned lady Katharin Luther, my gra¬ 
cious consort, at Wittenberg, grace and peace. 

“Dear Kathe: We sit here and suffer ourselves to be 
tortured, and would gladly be away; but that cannot be, 
I thiuk, for a week. Thou mayest say to Master Philip 
that he may correct his exposition; for he has not yet 
rightly understood why the Lord called riches thorns. 
Here is the school in which to learn that” (i. e ., the Mans¬ 
field controversy about property). “But it dawns on me 
that in the holy Scriptures thorns are always menaced 
with fire; therefore, I have all the more patience, hoping, 
with God’s help, to bring some good out of it all. It seems 
to me the devil laughs at us; but God laughs him to scorn! 
Amen. Pray for us. The messenger hastes. On St. 
Dorothea’s day. 

“M. L. (thy old lover.)” 

Dr. Luther seems to be enjoying himself in his own 
simple hearty way, at his old home. Nobles, and burghers, 
and wives, give him the most friendly welcome. 

The third letter Mistress Luther has received is full of 
playful, tender answers to her anxieties about him. 

“To my dear consort Katharin Lutherin, doctoress and 
self-tormentor at Wittenberg, my gracious lady, grace and 
peace in the Lord. Bead thou, dear Kathe, the Gospel 
of John, and the smaller Catechism, and then thou wilt 
say at once, ‘All that is in the book is said of me.’ For 
thou must needs take the cares of thy God upon thee, as 
if he were not almighty, and could not create ten Dr. 
Martins, if the old Dr. Martin were drowned in the Saala. 
Leave me in peace with thy cares! I have a better guardian 
than thou and all the angels. It is he who lay in the 
manger, and was fondled on a maiden’s breast; but who 
sitteth also now on the right hand of God the Almighty 
Father. Therefore be at peace.” 

And again: 

“ To the saintly, anxious lady, Katharin Lutherin, Doc- 


416 


THE SCHONBEllQ-GOTTA FAMILY. 


torin Zulsdorferin at Wittenberg, my gracious dear wife, 
grace and peace in Christ Most saintly lady doctoress: 
We thank your ladyship kindly for your great anxiety and 
care for us which prevented your sleeping; for since the 
time that you had this care for us, a fire nearly consumed us 
in our inn, close to my chamber door; and yesterday (doubt¬ 
less by the power of your care), a stone almost fell on our 
head, and crushed us as in a mouse-trap. For in our private 
chamber during more than two days, lime and mortar 
crashed above us, until we sent for workmen, who only 
touched the stone with two fingers, when it fell, as large as 
a large pillow two hand-breadths wide. For all this we 
should have to thank your anxiety; had not the dear holy 
angels been guarding us also! I begin to be anxious that 
if your anxieties do not cease, at last the earth may swallow 
us up, and all the elements pursue us. Dost thou indeed 
teach the Catechism and the Creed? Do thou then pray, 
and leave God to care, as it is promised. ‘Cast thy burden 
on the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.’ 

“We would now gladly be free and journey homeward, 
if God willed it so. Amen. Amen. Amen. On Scholas- 
tica’s day. The willing servant of your holiness, 

“Martin Luther.” 

February 17. 

Good news for us all at Wittenberg! Mistress Luthei 
has received a letter from the doctor, dated the 14th Feb¬ 
ruary announcing his speedy return. 

“ To my kind, dear wife, Katherine Lutherin von Bora, 
at Wittenberg: 

“Grace and peace in the Lord, dear Kathe! We hope 
this week to come home again, if God will. God has 
shown us great grace; for the lords have arranged all 
through their referees, except two or three articles—one of 
which is that Count Gebhard and Count Albrecht should 
again become brothers, which I undertake to-day, and will 
invite them to be my guests, that they may speak to each 
other, for hitherto they have been dumb, and have em¬ 
bittered one another with severe letters. 

“The young men are all in the best spirits, make excur¬ 
sions with fools’ bells on sledges—the young ladies also— 
and amuse themselves together; and among them also 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


417 


Count Gebhard’s son. So we must understand God is 
exauditor precum. 

“ I send to thee some game which the Countess Albrecht 
has presented to me. She rejoices with all her heart at the 
peace. Thy sons are still at Mansfeld. Jacob Luther will 
take good care of them. We have food and drink here like 
noblemen, and we are waited on well—too well, indeed— 
so that we might forget you at Wittenberg. I have no 
ailments. 

“ This thou canst show to Master Philip, to Dr. Pomer, 
and to Dr. Creuzer. The report has reached this place 
that Dr. Martin has been snatched away, as they say at 
Magdeburg and at Liepzig. Such fictions these countrymen 
compose, who see as far as their noses. Some say the em¬ 
peror is thirty miles from this, at Soest, in Westphalia; 
some that the Frenchman is captive, and also the Land¬ 
grave. But let us sing and say, we will wait what God 
the Lord will do. Eisleben, on the Sunday Valentini. 


“ M. Luther, D.” 


So the work of peacemaking is done, and Dr. Luther is 
to return to us this week—long, we trust, to enjoy among 
us the peacemaker’s beatitude. 


fritz’s story, 



It has been quite a festival day at Eisleben. The child 
who, sixty-three years since, was born here to John Luther 
the miner, returns to-day the greatest man in the empire, 
to arbitrate in a family dispute of the counts of Mansfeld.) 

As Eva and I watched him enter the town to-day from 
the door of our humble happy, home, she said: 

“ He that is greatest among you shall be as he that doth 
serve.” 

These ten last years of service have, however, aged him 
much! 

I could not conceal from myself that they had. There 
are traces of suffering on the expressive face, and there is a 
touch of feebleness in the form and step. 

“How is it,” I said to Eva, “that Else or Thekla did not 
tell us of this? He is certainly much feebler.” 

“They are always with him,” she said, “and we never 


418 


THE SGHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


see what Time is doing, love; but only what he has done.” 

Her words made me thoughtful. Could it be that such 
changes were passing on us also, and that we were failing 
to observe them? 

When Dr. Luther and the throng had passed, we 
returned into the house, and Eva resumed her knitting, 
while I recommenced the study of my sermon; but secretly 
I raised my eyes from my books and surveyed her. If time 
had indeed thus been changing that beloved form, it was 
better I should know it, to treasure more the precious days 
he was so treacherously stealing. 

Yet scarcely, with the severest scrutiny, could I detect 
the trace of age or suffering on her face or form. The 
calm brow was as white and calm as ever. The golden 
hair, smoothly braided under her white matronly cap, was 
as free from gray as even our Agnes’, who was flitting in 
and out of the winter sunshine, busy with household work 
in the next room. There was a roundness on the 
cheek, although, perhaps, its curve was a little changed; 
and when she looked up and met my eyes, was there not 
the very same happy, childlike smile as ever, that seemed 
to overflow from a world of sunshine within? 

“No!” I said; “Eva, thank God, I have not deluded 
myself! Time has not stolen a march on you yet.” 

“Think how I have been shielded, Fritz",” she said. 
“ What a sunny and sheltered life mine has been, never 
encountering any storm except under the shelter of such a 
home and such love. But Dr. Luther has been so long the 
one foremost and highest, on whose breast the first force of 
every storm has burst.” 

Just then our Heinz came in. 

“ Your father is trying to prove I am not growing old,” 
she said. 

“Who said such a thing of our mother?” asked Heinz, 
turning fiercely to Agnes. 

“No one,” I said; “but it startled me to see the change 
in Dr. Luther, and I began to fear what changes might 
have been going on unobserved in our own home.” 

“Is Dr. Luther much changed?” said Heinz. “I think 
I never saw a nobler face, so resolute and true, and with 
such a keen glance in his dark eyes. He might have been 
one of the emperor’s greatest generals, he looks so like a 
veteran.” 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


419 


“Is he not a veteran, Heinz?” said Eva. “Has he not 
fought all our battles for us for years? What do you think 
of him, Agnes?” 

“I remember best the look he gave my father and you,” 
she said. “His face looked so full of kindness; I thought 
how happy he must make his home.” 

That evening was naturally a time, with Eva and me, 
for going over the past. And how much of it is linked 
with Dr. Luther! That our dear home exists at all is, 
through God, his work. And more even than that; the 
freedom and peace of our hearts came to us chiefly at first 
through him. All the past came back to me when I saw 
his face again; as if suddenly flashed on me from a mirror. 
The days when he sang before Aunt Ursula Cotta’s door 
at Eisenach—when the voice which has since stirred all 
Christendom to its depths sang carols for a piece of bread. 
Then the gradual passing away of the outward trials of 
poverty, through his father’s prosperity and liberality—the 
brilliant prospects opening before him at the university— 
his sudden, yet deliberate closing of all those earthly 
schemes—the descent into the dark and bitter waters, where 
he fought the fight for his age, and, all but sinking, found 
the Hand that saved him, and came to the shore again on 
the right side; and not alone, but upheld evermore by the 
hand that rescued him, and which he has made known to 
the hearts of thousands. 

Then I seemed to see him stand before the emperor at 
Worms, in that day when men did not know whether to 
wonder most at his gentleness or his daring—in that hour 
which men thought was his hour of conflict but which was in 
truth his hour of triumph, after the real battle had been 
fought and the real victory won. 

And now twenty years more had passed away; the Bible 
has been translated by him into German, and is speaking 
in countless homes; homes hallowed (and, in many in¬ 
stances, created) by his teaching. 

“What then,” said Eva, “has been gained by his teach¬ 
ing and his work?” 

“The yoke of tradition, and of the papacy, is broken,” 
I said. “ The Gospel is preached in England, and, with 
more or less result, throughout Germany. In Denmark, 
an evangelical pastor has consecrated King Christian III. 
In the low countries, and elsewhere, men and women have 


420 


THE SCHOHB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


been martyred, as in the primitive ages, for the faith. In 
France and in Switzerland evangelical truth has been em¬ 
braced by tens of thousands, although not in Dr. Luther’s 
form, nor only from his lips.” 

“These are great results,” she replied; “but they are 
external—at least, we can only see the outside of them. 
What fruit is there in this little world, around us at Eis- 
leben, of whose heart we know something?” 

“The golden age is, indeed, not come,” I said, “or the 
counts of Mansfeld would not be quarreling about church 
patronage, and needing Dr. Luther as a peacemaker. Nor 
would Dr. Luther need so continually to warn the rich 
against avarice, and to denounce the selfishness which spent 
thousands of florins to buy exemption from future punish¬ 
ment, but grudges a few kreuzers to spread the glad tid¬ 
ings of the grace of God. If covetousness is idolatry, it is 
too plain that the Reformation has, with many, only 
changed the idol.” 

“Yet,” replied Eva, “it is certainly something to have 
the idol removed from the church to the market, to have 
it called by a despised instead of by a hallowed name, and 
disguised in any rather than in sacred vestments.” 

Thus we came to the conclusion that the Reformation 
had done for us what sunrise does. It had wakened life, 
and ripened real fruits of heaven in many places, and it 
had revealed evil and noisome things in their true forms. 
The world, the flesh, and the devil remain unchanged; but 
it is much to have learned that the world is not a certain 
definite region outside the cloister, but an atmosphere to 
be guarded against as around us everywhere, that the flesh 
is not the love of kindred or of nature, but of self in these , 
and that the devil’s most fiery dart is distrust of God. 
For us personally, and ours, how infinitely much Dr. 
Luther has done; and if for us nd ours, how much for 
countless other hearts and 1 



Dr. Luther administered the communion yesterday, 
and preached^ It has been a great help to have him going 
in and out among us. Four times he has preached; it 
seems to us, with as much point and fervor as ever. To¬ 
day, however, there was a deep solemnity about his words. 
His text was in Matt, xi., “Fear not therefore* for there 


THE 8CH0NBERG-C0TTA FAMILY. 421 

is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid 
that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, 
that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that 
preach ye on the house-tops. And fear not them which 
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather 
fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in 
hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one 
of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. 
But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” He 
must have felt feebler than he seemed, for he closed with 
the words: 

“This, and much more, may he said from the passage; 
but I am too weak, and here we will close.” 

Eva seemed very grave all the rest of the day; and when 
I returned from the school on this morning, she met me 
with an anxious face at the door, and said: 

“Is the doctor better?” 

“I have not heard that he is ill,” I said. “He was 
engaged with the arbitration again to-day.” 

“I cannot get those words of his out of my head,” she 
said; “they haunt me —‘Here we will close.' I cannot 
help thinking what it would be never to hear that faithful 
voice again.” 

“ You are depressed, my love,” I said, “at the thought 
of Dr. Luther’s leaving us this week. But by and by we 
will stay some little time at Wittenberg, and hear him 
again there.” 

“If God will,” she said gravely. “What God has given 
us, through him, can never be taken away.” 

I have inquired again about him, however, frequently 
to-day, but there seems no cause for anxiety. He retired 
from the Great Hall where the conferences and the meals 
take place at eight o’clock; and this evening as often 
before during his visit, Dr. Jonas overheard him praying 
aloud at the window of his chamber. 

Thursday, 18th February. 

The worst —the very worst—has come to pass. The 
faithful voice is, indeed, silenced to us on e^wth forever. 

Here where the life began it has closed. VHe who, sixty- 
three years ago, lay here a little helpless babe, lies here 
again a lifeless corpse. Yet it is not with sixty-three years 
ago, but with three days since that we feel the bitter contrast. 


422 THE 8CHONBEliO-GOTTA FAMILY. 

Three days ago he was among us, the counselor, the 
teacher, the messenger of God, and now that heart, open, 
tender to sympathize with sorrows, and so strong to bear 
a nation’s burden, has ceased to beat. 

Yesterday it was observed that he was feeble and ailing. 
The princes of Anhalt and the Count Albert of Mansfeld, 
with Dr. Jonas and his other friends, entreated him to rest 
in his own room during the morning. He was not easily 
persuaded to spare himself, and probably would not have 
yielded then, had he not felt that the work of reconcilia¬ 
tion was accomplished, in all save a few supplementary 
details. Much of the forenoon, therefore, he reposed on a 
leathern couch in his room, occasionally rising, with the 
restlessness of illness, and pacing the room, and standing 
in the window praying, so that Dr. Jonas and Coelius, who 
were in another part of the room, could hear him. He 
dined, however, at noon, in the Great Hall, with those 
assembled there. At dinner he said to some near him, “ If 
I can, indeed, reconcile the rulers of my birthplace with 
each other, and then, with God’s permission, accomplish 
the journey back to Wittenberg, I would go home and lay 
myself down to sleep in my grave, and let the worms 
devour my body.” 

He was not one weakly to sigh for sleep before night; 
and we now know too well from how deep a sense of bodily 
weariness and weakness that wish sprang. Tension of 
heart and mind, and incessant work, the toil of a daily 
mechanical laborer, with the keen, wearying thought of the 
highest intellectual energy, working as much as any drudg¬ 
ing slave, and as intensely as if all he did was his delight, 
at sixty-three the strong, peasant frame was worn out as 
most men’s are at eighty, and he longed for rest. 

In the afternoon he complained of painful pressure on 
the breast, and requested that it might be rubbed with 
warm cloths. This relieved him a little; and he went to 
supper again with his friends in the Great Hall. At table 
he spoke much of eternity, and said he believed his own 
death was near; yet his conversation was not only cheerful, 
but at times gay, although it related chiefly to the future 
world. One near him asked whether departed saints would 
recognize each other in heaven. He said, Yes, he thought 
they would. 

When he left the supper-table he went to his room. 


THE SCHONBEIIG-COTTA FAMILY. 


m 


In the night, last night, his two sons, Paul and Martin, 
thirteen and fourteen years of age, sat up to watch with 
him, with Justus Jonas, whose joys and sorrows he had 
shared through so many years. Coelius and Aurifaber also 
were with him. The pain in the breast returned, and 
again they tried rubbing him with hot cloths. Count 
Albert came, and the countess, with two physicians, and 
brought him some shavings from the tusk of a sea-unicorn, 
deemed a sovereign remedy. He took it, and slept till 
ten. Then he awoke, and attempted once more to pace 
the room a little; but he could not, and returned to bed. 
Then he slept again till one. During those two or three 
hours of sleep, his host Albrecht, with his wife, Ambrose, 
Jonas, and Luther’s son, watched noiselessly beside him, 
quietly keeping up the fire. Everything depended on how 
long he slept, and how he woke. 

The first words he spoke when he awoke sent a shudder 
of apprehension through their hearts. 

He complained of cold, and asked them to pile up more 
fire. Alas! the chill was creeping over him which no 
effort of man could remove. 

Dr. Jonas asked him if he felt very weak. 

“Oh,” he replied, “how I suffer! My dear Jonas, I 
think I shall die here, at Eisleben, where I was born and 
baptized.” 

His other friends were awakened, and brought in to his 
bedside. 

Jonas spoke of the sweat on his brow as a hopeful sign, 
but Dr. Luther answered: 

“It is the cold sweat of death. I must yield up my 
spirit, for my sickness increaseth.” 

Then he prayed fervently, saying: 

“Heavenly Father! everlasting and merciful God! thou 
hast revealed to me thy dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Him have I taught; Him have I experienced; Him have I 
confessed; Him I love and adore as my beloved Saviour, 
Sacrifice, and Redeemer—Him whom the godless persecute, 
dishonor, and reproach. Oh, heavenly Father, though I 
must resign my body, and be borne away from this life, I 
know that I shall be with him forever. Take my poor 
soul up to thee.” 

Afterward he took a little medicine, and, assuring his 
friends that he was dying, said three times: 


424 


THE 8CH0NB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


“ Father, into thy hands do I commend my spirit. Thou 
hast redeemed me, thou faithful God. Truly God hath so 
loved the world ! ” 

Then he lay quite quiet and motionless. Those around 
sought to rouse him, and began to rub his chest and limbs, 
and spoke to him, but he made no reply. Then Jonas and 
Ccelius, for the solace of the many who had received the 
truth from his lips, spoke aloud, and said: 

“Venerable father, do you die trustiug in Christ, and in 
the doctrine you have constantly preached?” 

He answered by an audible and joyful “Yes!” 

That was his last word on earth. Then, turning on his 
right side, he seemed to fall peacefully asleep for a quarter 
of an hour. Once more hope awoke in the hearts of his 
children and his friends; but the physician told them it 
was no favorable symptom. 

A light was brought near his face; a death-like paleness 
was creeping over it, and his hands and feet were becom¬ 
ing cold. 

Gently once more he sighed; and, with hands folded on 
his breast, yielded up his spirit to God without a struggle. 

This was at four o’clock in the morning of the 18th of 
February. 

And now, in the house opposite the church where he was 
baptized, and signed with the cross for the Christian war¬ 
fare, Martin Luther lies—his warfare accomplished, his 
weapons laid aside, his victory won—at rest beneath the 
standard he has borne so nobly. In the place where his 
eyes opened on this earthly life his spirit has awakened to 
the heavenly life. Often he used to speak of death as the 
Christian’s true birth, and this life as but a growing into 
the chrysalis-shell in which the spirit lives till its being is 
developed, and it bursts the shell, casts off the web, strug¬ 
gles into life, spreads its wings and soars up to God. 

To Eva and me it seems a strange, myterious seal set on 
his faith, that his birthplace and his place of death—the 
scene of his nativity to earth and heaven—should be the 
same. 

We can only say, amid irrepressible tears, those words 
often on his lips, “Oh death! bitter to those whom thou 
leavest in life!” and “Fear not, God liveth still” 


425 


THE 8CU0NBERG-C0TTA FAMILY. 
else’s story. 


March, 1546. 

It is all over. The beloved, revered form is with us 
again, but Luther our father, our pastor, our friend, will 
never be among us more. His ceaseless toil and care for 
us all have worn him out, the care which wastes life more 
than sorrow, care such as no man knew since the apostle 
Paul, which only faith such as St. Paul’s enabled him to 
sustain so long. 

This morning his widow, his orphan sons and daughter, 
and many of the students and citizens, went out to the 
eastern gate of the city to meet the funeral procession. 
Slowly it passed through the streets, so crowded, yet so 
silent, to the city church where he used to preach. 

Fritz came with the procession from Eisleben, and Eva, 
with Heinz and Agnes, are also with us, for it seemed a 
necessity to our mother once more to feel and see her beloved 
around her, now that death has shown us the impotence 
of a nation’s love to retain the life dearest and most needed 
of all. 

Fritz has been telling us of that mournful funeral jour¬ 
ney from Eisleben. 

the counts of Mansfeld, with more than fifty horsemen, 
and many princes, counts, and barons, accompanied the 
coffin. In every village through which they passed the 
church-bells tolled as if for the prince of the land; at every 
city gate magistrates, clergy, young and old, matrons, 
maidens, and little children, thronged to meet the procession, 
clothed in mourning, and chanting funeral hymns—Ger¬ 
man evangelical hymns of hope and trust, such as he had 
taught them to sing. In the last church in which it lay 
before its final resting place at Wittenberg, the people 
gathered around it, and sang one of his own hymns, “ I 
journey hence in peace,” with voices broken by sobs and 
floods of tears. 

Thus day and night the silent body was borne slowly 
through the Thuringian land. The peasants once more re¬ 
membered his faithful affection for them, and everywhere, 
from village and hamlet, and every little group of cottages, 
weeping men and women pressed forward to do honor to 
the poor remains of him they had so often misunderstood 
in life. 


426 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY . 


After Pastor Bugenhagen’s funeral sermon from Luther’s 
pulpit, Melancthon spoke a few words beside the coffin in 
the city church. They loved each other well. When 
Melancthon heard of his death he was most deeply affected, 
and said in the lecture-room: 

“ The doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and of faith in 
the Son of God, has not been discovered by any human 
understanding, but has been revealed unto us by God 
through this man whom He has raised up.” 

In the city church, beside the coffin, before the body was 
lowered into its last resting place near the pulpit where he 
preached, Dr. Melancthon pronounced these words in 
Latin, which Caspar Creutziger immediately translated 
into German: 

“Every one who truly knew him, must bear witness that 
he was a benevolent, charitable man, gracious in all his 
discourse, kindly and most worthy of love, and neither 
rash, passionate, self-willed, or ready to take offense. 
And, nevertheless, there were also in him an earnestness 
and courage in his words and bearing such as become a 
man like him. His heart was true and faithful, and with¬ 
out falsehood. The severity which he used against the foes 
of the doctrine in his writings did not proceed from a 
quarrelsome or angry disposition, but from great earnest¬ 
ness and zeal for the truth. He always showed a high 
courage and manhood, and it was no little roar of the 
enemy which could appall him. Menaces, dangers, and 
terror dismayed him not. So high and keen was his under¬ 
standing, that he alone in complicated, dark, and difficult 
affairs soon perceived what was to be counseled and to be 
done. Neither, as some think, was he regardless of 
authority, but diligently regarded the mind and will of 
those with whom he had to do. His doctrine did not con¬ 
sist in rebellious opinions made known with violence; it is 
rather an interpretation of the divine will and of the true 
worship of God, an explanation of the Word of God, 
namely, of the Gospel of Christ. Now he is united with 
the prophets of whom he loved to talk. Now they greet 
him as their fellow-laborer, and with him praise the Lord 
who gathers and preserves his church. But we must retain 
a perpetual, undying recollection of this our beloved father, 
and never let his memory fade from our hearts.” 

His effigy will be placed in the city church, but his liv- 


THE SCEONBERG-C0TTA FAMILY. 


427 


ing portrait is enshrined in countless hearts. His monu¬ 
ments are the schools throughout the land, every hallowed 
pastor’s home, and above all, “the German Bible for the 
German people!” 

Wittenberg, April, 1547. 

We stand now in the foremost rank of the generations 
of our time. Our father’s house on earth has passed away 
forever. Gently, not long after Dr. Luther’s death, our 
gentle mother passed away, and our father entered on the 
fulfillment of those never-failing hopes to which, since his 
blindness, his buoyant heart has learned more and more to 
cling. 

Scarcely separated a year from each other, both in ex¬ 
treme old age, surrounded by all dearest to them on earth, 
they fell asleep in Jesus. 

And now Fritz, who has an appointment at the univer¬ 
sity, lives in the paternal house with his Eva and our 
Thekla, and the children. 

Of all our family I sometimes think Thekla’s life is the 
most blessed. In our evangelical church, also, I perceive, 
God by his providence makes nuns; good women, whose 
wealth of love is poured out in the church, whose inner as 
well as whose outer circle is the family of God. How 
many whom she has trained in the school and nursed in the 
seasons of pestilence or adversity, live on earth to call her 
blessed, or live in heaven to receive her into the everlasting 
habitations. 

l^The little garden behind the Augustei, has become a 
sacred place. Luther’s widow and children still live there. 
Those who knew him, and therefore loved him best, find a 
sad pleasure in lingering under the shadow of the trees 
which used to shelter him, beside the fountain and the 
little fish-pond which he made, and the flowers he planted, 
and recalling his words and his familiar ways; how he used 
to thank God for the fish from the pond, and the vege¬ 
tables sent to his table from the garden; how he used to 
wonder at the providence of God, who fed the sparrows 
and all the little birds, “ which must cost Him more in a 
year than the revenue of the king of France;” how he 
rejoiced in the “dew, that wonderful work of God,” and 
the rose, ^which no artist could imitate, and the voice of 
the birds. , How living the narratives of the Bible became 


428 


THE SCffONB ERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


when he spoke of them! of the great apostle Paul whom 
he so honored, bnt pictured as “an insignificant-looking, 
meager man, like Philip Melancthon;” or of the Virgin 
Mary, “who must have been a high and noble creature, 
a fair and gracious maiden, with a kind, sweet voice;” or 
of the lowly home at Nazareth, “where the Saviour of the 
world was brought up as a little obedient child.” 

And not one of us, with all his vehemence, could ever 
remember a jealous or suspicious word, or a day of estrange¬ 
ment, so generous and trustful was his nature. 

Often, also, came back to us the tones of that rich, true 
voice, and of the lute or lyre, which used so frequently to 
sound from the dwelling-room with the large window, at 
his friendly entertainments, or in his more solitary hours. 

Then, in twilight hours of quiet, intimate converse, 
Mistress Luther can recall to us the habits of his more 
inner home life—how in his sickness he used to comfort 
her, and when she was weeping, would say, with irrepres¬ 
sible tears, “Dear Kathe, our children trust us, though 
they cannot understand; so must we trust God. It is well 
if we do; all comes from him.” And his prayers morning 
and evening, and frequently at meals and at other times in 
the day—his devout repeating of the Smaller Catechism, 
“to God”—his frequent fervent utterance of the Lord’s 
Prayer, or of psalms from the Psalter, which he always 
carried with him as a pocket prayer-book. Or, at other 
times, she may speak reverently of his hours of conflict, 
when his prayers became a tempest—a torrent of vehement 
supplication—a wrestling with God, as a son in agony at 
the feet of a father. Or, again, of his sudden wakings in 
the night, to encounter the unseen devil with fervent 
prayer, or scornful defiance, or words of truth and faith. 

More than one among us knew what reason he had to 
believe in the efficacy of prayer. Melancthon, especially, 
can never forget the day when he lay at the point of death, 
half unconscious, with eyes growing dim, and Luther came 
and exclaimed with dismay: 

“God save us! how successfully has the devil misused 
this mortal frame!” 

And then turning from the company toward the window, 
to pray, looking up to the heavens, he came, as he himself 
said afterward, “as a mendicant and a suppliant to God, 
and pressed him with all the promises of the holy Scrip- 


THE SCRONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


429 


tures he could recall; so that God must hear me, if ever 
again I should trust his promises.” 

After that prayer, he took Melancthon by the hand, and 
said, “Be of good cheer, Philip, you will not die.” And 
from that moment Melancthon began to revive and recover 
consciousness, and was restored to health. 

Especially, however, we treasure all he said of death and 
the resurrection, of heaven and the future world of right¬ 
eousness and joy, of which he so delighted to speak. A few 
of these I may record for my children. 

“ In the papacy, they made pilgrimages to the shrines of 
the saints—to Rome, Jerusalem, St. Jago—to atone for 
sins. But now, we in faith can make -true pilgrimages, 
which really please God. When we diligently read the 
prophets, psalms, and evangelists, we journey toward God, 
not through cities of the saints, but in our thoughts and 
hearts, and visit the true promised land and paradise of 
everlasting life. 

“ The devil has sworn our death, but he will crack a deaf 
nut. The kernel will be gone.” 

He had so often been dangerously ill, that the thought 
of death was very familiar to him. In one of his sicknesses 
he said, “ I know I shall not live long. My brain is like a 
knife worn to the hilt; it can cut no longer.” 

“At Coburg I used to go about and seek for a quiet place 
where I might be buried, and in the chapel under the cross 
I thought I could lie well. But now I am worse than 
then. God grant me a happy end! I have no desire to 
live longer.” 

When asked if people could be saved under the papacy 
who had never heard his doctrine of the Gospel, he said, 
“ Many a monk have I seen, before whom, on his deathbed, 
they held the crucifix, as was then the custom. Through 
faith in His merits and passion, they may, indeed, have 
been saved.” 

“What is our sleep,” he said, “but a kind of death? 
And what is death itself but a night-sleep? In sleep all 
weariness is laid aside, and we become cheerful again, and 
rise in the morning fresh and well. So shall we awake 
from our graves in the last day, as though we had only 
slept a night, and bathe our eyes and rise fresh and well.” 

“Oh gracious God!” he exclaimed, “come quickly, come 
at last! I wait ever for that day—that morning of spring!” 


430 


THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY. 


And he waits for it still. Not now, indeed, on earth, 
“in what kind of place we know not,” as he said; “but 
most surely free from all grief and pain, resting in peace 
and in the love and grace of God.” 

We also wait for that Day of Redemption, still in the 
weak flesh and amid the storm and the conflict; but strong 
and peaceful in the truth Martin Luther taught us, and in 
the God he trusted to the last. 


THE EtfD. 


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Abbe Constantin. By L. Halevy. 
Abbot. By Sir Walter Scott. 
£dam Bede. By George Eliot. 
Aesop’s Fables. 

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Alice in Wonderland, and Through 
the Looking Glass. By Lewis 
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Alice Lorraine. R. D. Blackmore. 
All Sorts and Conditions of Men. 

By Besant and Rice. 

Amiel’s Journal. Translated by 
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Andersen’s Fairy Tales. 

Anne of Geierstein. By Sir Wal¬ 
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Antiquary. Sir Walter Scott. 
Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. 
Ardath. By Marie Corelli. 
Armadale. By Wilkie Collins. 
Armorel of Lyonesse. W. Besant. 
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Sunbeam. By Mrs. Brassey. 
Arundel Motto. Mary Cecil Hay. 
At the Back of the North Wind. 

By George Macdonald. 

Attic Philosopher. E. Souvestre. 
Auld Licht Idyls. J. M. Barrie. 
Aunt Diana. By Rosa N. Carey. 
Aurelian. By William Ware. 
Autobiography of B. Franklin. 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 

By O. W. Holmes. 

Averil. By Rosa N. Carey. 
Bacon’s Essays. Francis Bacon. 
Barbara Heathcote’s Trial. Rosa 
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Barnaby Rudge. Charles Dickens. 
Barrack-Room Ballads. Rudyard 
Kipling. 

Betrothed. Sir Walter Scott. 
Beulah. By Augusta J. Evans. 
Black Beauty. By Anna Sewell. 
Black Dwarf. Sir Walter Scott. 
Black Rock. By Ralph Connor. 
Bleak House. Charles Dickens. 
Bondman, The. By Hall Caine. 
Bride of Lammermoor. Sir Wal¬ 
ter Scott. 

Bride of the Nile, The. George 
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Browning’s Poems. Elizabeth Bar¬ 
rett Browning. 

Browning’s Poems. (Robert.) 
Bryant’s Poems. W. C. Bryant. 
Burgomaster’s Wife. Geo. Ebers. 
Burns’x Poems. By Robert Burns. 
By Order of the King. V. Hugo. 
Byron’s Poems. By Lord Byron. 
California and Oregon Trail, By 
Francis Parkman, Jr- 



Carey’s Poems. By Alice and 
Phoebe Carey. 

Cast Up by the Sea. By Sir Sam¬ 
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Caxtons. Bulwer-Lytton. 

Chandos. By “Ouida.” 

Charles Aachester. E. Berger. 

Character. By Samuel Smiles. 

Charles O’Malley. Charles Lever. 

Chevalier de Maison Rouge. By 
Alexandre Dumas. 

Chicot the Jester. Alex. Dumas. 

Children of the Abbey. By Regina 
Maria Roche. 

Children of Gibeon. W. Besant. 

Child’s History of England. By 
Charles Dickens 

Christmas Stories. Chas. Dickens. 

Clara Vaughan R. D. Blackmore. 

Cloister and the Hearth. Charles 
Reade. 

Coleridge’s Poems. Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge. 

Complete Angler. Walton & Cot¬ 
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Confessions of an Opium Eater. 
By Thomas De Quincey. 

Conquest of Granada. Washing¬ 
ton Irving. 

Consuelo. By George Sand. 

Corinne, By Madame De Stael. 

Countess de Cbarny. A. Dumas. 

Countess Gisela. E. Marlitt. 

Countess of Rudolstadt. By Geo, 
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Count Robert of Paris. W. Scott 

Courtship of Miles Standish. B; 
H. W. Longfellow. 

Cousin Pons. By H. de Balzac. 

Cradock Nowell. By R. D. Black 
more. 

Cranford. By Mrs. Gaskell. 

Cripps the Carrier. R. D. Black 
more. 

Crown of Wild Olive. J. Ruskin 

Daniel Deronda. George Eliot. 

Data of Ethics. H. Spencer. 

Daughter of an Empress. Bj 
Louisa Muhlbacb. 
































































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Descend of Man. Charles Darwin. 

Dick Sand. By Jules Verne. 

Discourses of Epictetus. Trans- 
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